Section: Research Program

Objective 3: Exploring new applications and usages

Objective 3 is centered on the applications and usages. Beyond the human sensori-motor and cognitive skills (Objective 1), and the hardware and software components (Objective 2), Objectives 3 takes into account broader criteria for the emergence of new usages and applications in various areas, and in particular in the scope of learning, popularization of science, art and entertainment. Our goal here is not to develop full-packaged end-user applications. Instead, our contribution is to stimulate the evolution of current applications with new engaging interactive systems.

Popularization of science

In the scope of popularization of science, we have built a strong partnership with Cap Sciences, which is a center dedicated to the popularization of science in Bordeaux that is visited by thousands of visitors every month. This was initiated with the ANR national project InSTInCT, whose goal was to study the benefits of 3D touch-based interaction in public exhibitions. This project has led to the creation of a Living Lab where several systems developed by Potioc are tested by the visitors. This provides us with interesting feedback that goes beyond the feedback we can obtain in our controlled lab-experiments. In the scope of archeology, we also contributed to a new system dedicated to public exhibitions, and we collected the current work around the world in this area in a dedicated special issue of a journal. We also contributed to an experiment at "Palais de la découverte" in Paris, where hundreds of visitors have experimented with PapARt (Figure 3 ).

Education

In the scope of education, we are currently collaborating with Stṕhanie Fleck from Université de Lorraine for exploring new interactive systems that enhance learning processes. Furthermore, we have launched a project with colleagues in the scope of teaching optical phenomena in optics. Our project HOBIT aims at developing an Hybrid Optical Bench for Innovative Teaching.

Art

In the scope of Art, we are convinced that the work that is conducted in Potioc may benefit to creation from the artist point of view, and it may open new interactive experiences from the audience point of view. We have conducted work with colleagues who are specialists in digital music, and with musicians. This led to several scientific publications and live artistic performances. We have also worked with an architect in order to explore neurodesign, i.e., the use of neural signals for design, here for the design of artistic shapes. Furthermore, we continued exploring the artistic domain in the scope of interactive juggling.

Entertainment

In the scope of entertainement, we notably explored BCI-based gaming and non-medical applications of BCI. In particular, we studied and analyzed how BCI could be used as a control channel for virtual reality and gaming applications, as well as the pros and cons of BCI-based gaming. We also proposed and studied a multiplayer BCI-based game. Our work so far suggests that BCI-based gaming and virtual reality applications are feasible and promising, but that many research challenges are still to be overcome for widespread use. In another example in the field of entertainment we studied several input modalities for playing a game in mobile AR.