The VR@POLITO will participate in the Turin International Book Fair (Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino) with several initiatives.

At the stand of Politecnico di Torino, the Department of Control and Computer Engineering (DAUIN) will organize a hands-on experience on “Natural interactions in virtual reality and augmented reality”.

Participants will be allowed to engage in a first-person game by exploiting the cutting edge “passive haptics” technology, which leverages physical devices that can be touched, pulled and squeezed to increase the sense of presence in virtual reality-based environments. In this case, haptic interfaces are built using off-the-shelf toy construction bricks. Bricks can be assembled to provide the intended feedback in different tasks. Moreover, they may be reassembled in another application to mimic completely new objects and support totally different tasks. The experience has been recently presented at the 3DUI contest of the 2019 IEEE Virtual Reality Conference in Osaka, Japan.

At the Bookstock Village, the Department of Control and Computer Engineering will also present another experience on “Virtual reality and 3D animations”. Animating virtual characters in an operation that could be particularly complex, as it requires the use of quite sophisticated user interfaces. 

Even expert animators might spend hours or days to create an animation possibly lasting just few seconds. Virtual reality, already applied successfully in different fields (training, entertainment, rehabilitation, etc.) can be of help, since it is able to simplify the interaction with digital content of different types through one of its peculiar features: immersiveness. Taking these aspects into account, an open source framework has been developed that provide users with typical tools for virtual character animation in a totally immersive environment. During the experience, participants with very different skills (from casual users to expert animators) will be allowed to wear a common virtual reality headset, immerse themselves into a virtual environment and exploit their creativity to give life, in an interactive way, to their three-dimension stories.  

The Department of Department of Structural, Geotechnical and Building Engineering (DISEG), will present another experience titled “Living in virtual reality”. The activity merges the possibility to explore fun and engaging experiences based on special wearable displays with more traditional gaming solutions. 

Participants will be allowed to interact with innovative equipment and position them on an interactive map. They will also learn about virtual and augmented reality through concrete applications of such technologies. Using controllers and headsets, participants will be given the possibility to navigate in immersive 3D environments, as well as to build virtual puzzles, tidy up ancient artifacts and get in contact with 3D-printed objects. The goal is to train participants’ mind to recall shapes and colors, teach them how to move in virtual environments by recalling paths and objects, learn about new technologies applied to the fields of gaming and constructions, as well as make new generations familiarize with immersive technologies.