Current Research Interests

My current research focuses on stimulating the human senses in making virtual experiences more realistic. I am also interested in the topic of effective interaction techniques in immersive virtual environments. I am director of the Human Interaction in Virtual Environments (HIVE) Lab, where we are focusing on the use of vibrotactile feedback for various applications in virtual environments, simulation, and real environments.

I received my Doctor of Science in Computer Science in May, 1999, from the Department of Computer Science at The George Washington University. I then joined the same department, and was an Assistant Professor from July 1999 until July 2005. After that I moved to the Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In addition to Computer Science, I am a faculty in the Interactive Media & Game Development program.

Here are some of my publications.

I have been fortunate enough to spend the summers of 2002 through 2006 at ATR International in Kyoto, Japan as a Visiting Researcher, most recently in the Knowledge Science Lab, Knowledge Input & Output Group.

You can also see a movie of the MRI images of my head they collected in the summer of 2004 (14.2 MB).

I have compiled links to interesting I/O devices for the PlayStation/PlayStation2 console.

Here are some deadlines for paper submissions.

In the summer of 1999, I worked at the Naval Research Lab in the HCI Lab. I conducted a survey of different VR softare and hardware available at the time.

In the summer of 1997, I took part in the NSF Summer Institute in Japan Program. I worked in the National Institute of Bioscience and Human-Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, under Dr. Yukio Fukui.
Here is a picture of a lab visit I made to NASDA, the Japanese counterpart to NASA.

(Actually, it's just their cafeteria ;-)

Some of the guys from Dr. Fukui's lab

In the Spring of 1997, I completed an animation called "The Musicbox".

I have written a front-end to BMRT. It is called RenderWrapper, and will hopefully make rendering with the BMRT toolset a bit easier.

A friend sent me the link to a useful site for converting between file types.

I've been making a collection of Virtual Environment Links on the Web. Let me know if you find one I should add.

I've also found an invaluable site on Advice on Research and Writing.

I've been interested in simple Electrical Engineering circuit design, and found a great primer by Paul H. Dietz, called "A Pragmatic Introduction to the Art of Electrical Engineering." (682 KB) There is a parts list that goes along with it. Here is a site that talks more about the Stamp microprocessor.

This is a good technical report search place.

I took part in the Global Multimedia Challenge, as part of the Youth Skills Olympics, in Lyon, France. I was one of four members of the team representing the United States. Five other countries competed in the challenge sponsored by Dusseldorp Skills Forum and the Workskill Australia Foundation.

I designed a logo for the GW Graphics Group for the annual T-Shirt Design Compettition at the SIGGRAPH conference.

Return to Rob's Home Page.

Last Change: June 16, 2006 / gogo at wpi.edu