Speaker: Dr. Gordon Wetzstein, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, Stanford University
Title: Computational Near-eye Displays: Engineering the Interface Between Our Visual System and the Digital World
Abstract: Immersive visual and experiential computing systems, i.e. virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), are entering the consumer market and have the potential to profoundly impact our society. Applications of these systems range from communication, entertainment, education, collaborative work, simulation and training to telesurgery, phobia treatment, and basic vision research. In every immersive experience, the primary interface between the user and the digital world is the near-eye display. Thus, developing near-eye display systems that provide a high-quality user experience is of the utmost importance. Many characteristics of near-eye displays that define the quality of an experience, such as resolution, refresh rate, contrast, and field of view, have been significantly improved over the last years. However, a significant source of visual discomfort prevails: the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC). Further, natural focus cues are not supported by any existing near-eye display. In this talk, we discuss frontiers of engineering next-generation opto-computational near-eye display systems to increase visual comfort and provide realistic and effective visual experiences.
Speaker Biography: Gordon Wetzstein is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science at Stanford University. He is the leader of the Stanford Computational Imaging Group, an interdisciplinary research group focused on advancing imaging, microscopy, and display systems. At the intersection of computer graphics, machine vision, optics, scientific computing, and perception, Prof. Wetzstein’s research has a wide range of applications in next-generation consumer electronics, scientific imaging, human-computer interaction, remote sensing, and many other areas. Prior to joining Stanford in 2014, Prof. Wetzstein was a Research Scientist in the Camera Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia in 2011 and graduated with Honors from the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany before that. His doctoral dissertation focuses on computational light modulation for image acquisition and display and won the Alain Fournier Ph.D. Dissertation Annual Award. He organized the IEEE 2012 and 2013 International Workshops on Computational Cameras and Displays, founded displayblocks.org as a forum for sharing computational display design instructions with the DIY community, and presented a number of courses on Computational Displays and Computational Photography at ACM SIGGRAPH. Gordon is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, he won best paper awards at the International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) in 2011 and 2014 as well as a Laval Virtual Award in 2005.
Click here to access slides from this presentation in PDF format.