Lesson 4: Immersive Technology

Immersive Technology is referred as “ a new generation of media”,(Zuckerberge,2018).

It is a media that stimulate physical senses to the point where user experience psychological
immersion.
It has the capability to make users so involved in the filmed, photographed, synthetic, or mixed
environment that they have an impression that it is real and that they are present in this environment
(so called “being there”).
It is used to deliver an inclusive, extensive, surrounding, and vivid illusion of reality to the senses of a
user or the human participant (Slater and Wilbur)
Sectors:
4 Variations of Immersive Tech:
1. Virtual reality (VR), where a 3D environment or image can be interacted with in a seemingly
real way;
2. Augmented reality (AR), where a user’s real world experience is enhanced with additional
overlays that are not anchored to or part of reality;
3. Mixed reality (MR), where synthetic content is overlaid on the real world and is capable of
anchoring itself to and interacting with it in real time;
4. Haptics, that can recreate the sense of touch and thus immerse a user even further.

Virtual Reality
In a VR environment, a user is completely shut out from the rest of the world while being surrounded
by content. A user typically wears a head mounted display and whatever is being shown in this
display becomes the user’s “reality.” This allows the user to experience real and imagined worlds. VR
stimulates as many senses as possible, from your vision, hearing, touch, and even smell, so that the
display is as real, as convincing, and interactive for the user.

Augmented Reality
In AR, users aren’t completely shut off from the world. Instead, AR extends reality by presenting
digital images on top of the real world. Computer generated images are superimposed over the
user’s view of the real world. Imagine how science fiction movies depict people swiping screens or
clicking buttons in the air. It basically adds to the reality you would ordinarily see rather than replace
it. This is how you interact with AR. Examples: Snapchat filters, Pokemon Go, IKEA mobile app, Star
Walk app, Disney coloring books

Mixed Reality
Mixed reality is a blend of physical and virtual worlds that includes both real and computer-generated
objects. The two worlds are "mixed" together to create a realistic environment. A user can navigate
this environment and interact with both real and virtual objects. Mixed reality (MR) combines aspects
of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

Haptics
Haptic technology enables natural interaction of a user with virtual objects in a 3D scene.
Basic types of interaction in the 3D scene are:
(1) navigation (movement of camera);
(2) object selection;
(3) object manipulation.
It can be used for interaction with objects in a virtual scene for two purposes:
(1) sensorial feedback
(2) objects control.
Wearable Technology
Wearable technologies are just like the usual things we wear like watches, arm bands,
glasses, and shoes but with a twist. The twist being it is able to capture data (physiological in nature)
from the people who wears them. The data can then be analyzed further for various purposed like
health monitoring. It is also known as wearable gadgets.
Commonly used wearable technology:
 Smartwatches are wrist-worn devices that connect to your mobile phone to act as mini-
windows onto your digital life.
The mighty Apple Watch now dominates the landscape. It brings notifications and calls from the
iPhone screen and tracks your physical activity. There’s independent GPS for location services
and an LTE model.
Beyond the Apple Watch, Google’s own Wear OS is the equivalent for Android phone users.
Watches like the Skagen Falster 3 offer slim design and great for men's and women's wrists alike.
 Fitness trackers remain very popular among people who want to track progress through heart
rate, steps and estimated calorie burn, while receiving some smartphone notifications.
They’re perfect if you don’t/want super-advanced metrics provided by sports watches, or don’t
want a mini smartphone like the Apple Watch. They also offer longer battery life than
smartphones.
 Smart glass is a smart wearable device that brings up the wearers, computing facilities, and
clients together for handling the most complex task in a simple manner.
With smart glasses, the available information at the work site is easily transferred to the
controlling and central or distributed monitoring stations.
The process of information exchange, information sharing is done very quickly and even can be
stored for future reference

Internet of Things (IoT)

connects the things in the physical world in a sensitive and intelligent way with virtual world at
any time and at any place. It can be considered as a network of different physical objects embedded
with sensors, communication technology, and assigned a unique address, which are connected via
cables or wirelessly and interact with the environment to form a network of smart things, which sense
the environment of real world and send data for intelligent analysis and make useful independent
decisions.

Basic Requirements:
1. Communications: You must connect things to a network with Internet resources or between them
to be able to use data and services.
2. Addressing and identification: Everything has a unique address and unique identifier.
3. Sensing: Objects collect information in their environment with extended sensors, record
information, and send data or interact directly with them.
4. Triggers: Objects contain triggers for remote control of real-world operations.
5. Embedded information processing: Smart objects have processor with a simple storage
capacity which is used to process sensor information.
6. Localization: is required to know the position of smart objects by GPS.
7. User Interface: is used for the purpose of communicating between smart objects and users
Internet of Things Characteristics:
1. Intelligence: It makes things smarter by providing them with computing techniques and software.
2. Connectivity: It has the ability to produce and consume data.
3. Interconnection: Depending on the Internet of Things, anything can be linked and used within the
information and communication infrastructure.
4. Sense: It uses smart objects to know the surrounding physical environment.
5. Power: Smart power should be designed.
6. Safety: The safety and security of Internet of Things components must be guaranteed during
design, work and integrity of the data in circulation.
7. Diversity and Difference: The devices and networks used in the Internet of Things is
interconnected, despite its diversity based on its various physical platforms.

IoT Applications:
 Smart Home - refers to a convenient home setup where appliances and devices can be
automatically controlled remotely from anywhere with an internet connection using a mobile or
other networked device.
 Smart city is a municipality that uses information and communication technologies (ICT) to
increase operational efficiency, share information with the public and improve both the quality
of government services and citizen welfare.
 Smart Grid is an electricity network based on digital technology that is used to supply
electricity to consumers via two-way digital communication. This system allows for monitoring,
analysis, control and communication within the supply chain to help improve efficiency, reduce
energy consumption and cost, and maximize the transparency and reliability of the energy
supply chain.

Artificial intelligence (AI)
refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans
and mimic their actions.
It has the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly
associated with intelligent beings.
The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the
intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning,
generalize, or learn from past experience. 

Goals of AI :
» To Create Expert Systems: The systems which exhibit intelligent behavior, learn,
demonstrate, explain, and advice its users.
» To Implement Human Intelligence in Machines: Creating systems that understand, think,
learn, and behave like humans.
Sector:
 Finance - “Decisions about loans are now being made by software that can take into account
a variety of finely parsed data about a borrower, rather than just a credit score and a
background check.” There are so-called robo-advisers that “create personalized investment
portfolios, obviating the need for stockbrokers and financial advisers.”
 National security - Through its Project Maven, the American military is deploying AI “to sift
through the massive troves of data and video captured by surveillance and then alert human
analysts of patterns or when there is abnormal or suspicious activity.”
 Health - AI tools are helping designers improve computational sophistication in health care.
For example, Merantix is a German company that applies deep learning to medical issues. It
has an application in medical imaging that “detects lymph nodes in the human body in
Computer Tomography (CT) images.”

Applications of AI:
» Gaming - AI plays crucial role in strategic games such as chess, poker, tic-tac-toe, etc., where
machine can think of large number of possible positions based on heuristic knowledge.
» Natural Language Processing - It is possible to interact with the computer that understands
natural language spoken by humans.
» Expert Systems - There are some applications which integrate machine, software, and
special information to impart reasoning and advising. They provide explanation and advice to
the users.
» Speech Recognition - Some intelligent systems are capable of hearing and comprehending
the language in terms of sentences and their meanings while a human talks to it. It can handle
different accents, slang words, noise in the background, change in human’s noise due to cold,
etc.
» Vision Systems - These systems understand, interpret, and comprehend visual input on the
computer.
» Handwriting Recognition - The handwriting recognition software reads the text written on
paper by a pen or on screen by a stylus. It can recognize the shapes of the letters and convert
it into editable text.
» Intelligent Robots - Robots are able to perform the tasks given by a human. They have
sensors to detect physical data from the real world such as light, heat, temperature,
movement, sound, bump, and pressure. They have efficient processors, multiple sensors and
huge memory, to exhibit intelligence. In addition, they are capable of learning from their
mistakes and they can adapt to the new environment.