To address the multidisciplinary challenges tackled in this project, this project combines the expertise of several Inria, academic and industrial partners.
Inria partners
- GRAPHDECO (Sophia): George Drettakis (Inria)
- HYBRID (Rennes): Ferran Argelaguet (Inria), Anatole Lécuyer (Inria)
- MIMETIC (Rennes): Ludovic Hoyet (Inria), Franck Multon (Université Rennes 2)
- LOKI (Lille): Géry Casiez (Université de Lille 1), Stéphane Huot (Inria), Thomas Pietrzak (Université de Lille 1)
- MORPHEO (Grenoble): Edmond Boyer (Inria), Stefanie Wuhrer (Inria)
- POTIOC (Bordeaux): Martin Hachet (Inria)
In particular, several PhD students and research fellows are working on the project, usually in collaboration between two or more Inria teams
- Rebecca Fribourg, PhD Student (HYBRID-MIMETIC, 2017-2020) – thesis
- Marc Baloup, PhD Student (LOKI-POTIOC, 2018-2020) – thesis
- Jean Basset, PhD Student (MORPHEO-MIMETIC, 2018-2022) – thesis
- Diane Dewez, PhD Student (HYBRID-MIMETIC, 2018-2020) – thesis
- Nicolas Olivier, PhD Student (MIMETIC-HYBRID, Cifre PhD with INTERDIGITAL, 2019-2022) – thesis
- Adélaïde Genay, PhD Student (POTIOC-HYBRID, 2019-2022)
- Grégoire Richard, PhD Student (LOKI-HYBRID, 2019-2023)
- Antonin Cheymol, PhD Student (HYBRID, 2021-2024)
- Maé Mavromatis, PhD Student (HYBRID-MIMETIC, 2021-2024)
- Yann Moullec, PhD Student (HYBRID, 2021-2024)
- Rada Deeb, Research Fellow (GRAPHDECO-MORPHEO, funded on ERC FUNGRAPH, 2019-2020)
Academic International partner
Mel Slater (Event Lab, University Barcelona, Spain). Our project relies on the transversal challenge of characterising the perceptual experience and the resulting sense of embodiment across the whole process of acquiring, simulating, interacting and “sensing” through the avatar, and will therefore benefit from his unique expertise. He is a world expert on the fundamental psychological and neuroscience aspects dealing with virtual environment, in particular for aspects related to “virtual embodiment”, who coordinated several European projects related to VR and avatars (e.g., ERC TRAVERSE, ERC PoC SERE and PSI, FP7 VR_HYPERSPACE, FET PRESENCCIA).
Industrial partners
InterDigital (VFX/VR teams, Rennes, formerly Technicolor). In collaboration with our industrial partner, we will design and develop novel immersive experiences oriented towards the movie industries. In particular, the goal is to produce a short immersive movie demonstrating the benefits for users to be embodied in their avatar while interacting with the virtual environment in terms of immersion and affective experience. The team has several past experiences on this topic through both collaborations with Technicolor’s studios and research departments, including for example the Kygo VR Experience (MPC), John Lewis’ Interactive Christmas VR Experience (MPC), or the Immersive Lab research experiences.
Faurecia. Given the economical potential of enacting real world situations in VR, training is naturally another application for use-cases involving avatars, especially when the gesture of the user is a key element in the performance of the task (e.g., in sports, medical, or industrial gestures training). In collaboration with Faurecia, international automotive parts manufacturer, we have identified a secondary use-case exploring scenarios to train workers to new industrial processes and production lines. This is an important challenge in industries, as costs associated with real training can affect the competitiveness of the company, especially because of important staff turnover and the necessity to stop production lines to train new staff.
