Credit: Andreea-Anamaria Muresan
YouTube is a treasure trove of virtual reality fails: users tripping, colliding into walls and smacking inanimate and animate objects. By investigating these VR Fails on YouTube, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have sought to learn more about when and why things go sideways for users and how to improve VR design and experiences so as to avoid accidents.
Millions of YouTube viewers have enjoyed hearty laughs watching others getting hurt using virtual reality - people wearing VR headsets, falling, screaming, crashing into walls and TV sets, or knocking spectators to the floor. Some of us have even been that failing someone. Now, videos of virtual reality mishaps, called VR Fails , have actually become a field of research.
In the modern day, our interactions with voice-based devices and services continue to increase. In this light, researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and RIKEN, Japan, have performed a meta-synthesis to understand how we perceive and interact with the voice (and the body) of various machines. Their findings have generated insights into human preferences, and can be used by engineers and designers to develop future vocal technologies.
Global Fishing Watch has launched an innovative technology portal to help strengthen management of marine protected areas (MPAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). The portal hosts diverse datasets and analysis tools to support marine spatial planning and ocean stewardship. Founded by philanthropist and ocean advocate, Dona Bertarelli, the technology aims to revolutionize our ability to dynamically monitor and conserve marine ecosystems.
The Finnish solution to include all types of biodiversity data and the whole data life cycle, from collection to use, in the same data infrastructure is unique. It is also rare for one infrastructure to be able to serve cutting-edge research, public administration, business and the civil society simultaneously. This solution, the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility FinBIF is described as a best-practice model in biodiversity informatics in a recent paper in the Nature Portfolio journal Scientific Data.