>> MSc and BSc Projects: Media Exploration in VR

Virtual reality (VR) presents a new approach for users to interact with computer systems and applications. Due to its recent emergence, however, the designers of complex systems are still learning how to design and optimize the user experience for VR. At the same time, multimedia analytics, a field aimed at analyzing and understanding multimedia collections, has been rapidly developing. In the MMX-VR project (http://staff.ru.is/bjorn/#main/mmx-vr.html) at Reykjavik University, we are developing the ViRMA system, a novel approach to multimedia analytics using a VR interface.

The following project ideas are part of the MMX-VR project. Students will be supervised by Dr. Björn Þór Jónsson and Dr. Omar Shahbaz Khan. All projects can be scaled up or down, depending on the level of the project (BSc vs. MSc Project vs. MSc Thesis) and the number of students. We are also open to other project ideas that fit within the MMX-VR project. For more information, please contact Björn (bjorn@ru.is).

> Exploratory Video Player in Unity/VR

The ViRMA software can be used to interactively analyze media collections that contain videos and video clips. In this case, users often rapidly play short segments of several different videos to learn what they contain. This usage is very different from traditional video viewing, where the goal is to watch the full video in detail. The goal of this project is to write an interactive video player, in the context of the ViRMA software, for this specific purpose. This project involves both Unity/VR programming and significant experimentation, and could even involve formal user studies.

> Multi-Collection Exploration in ViRMA

Currently, each media collection explored in ViRMA must reside in its own PostgreSQL database, and to explore a new collection the system must be initialised with new database parameters. This project aims to merge collections with different media types, different metadata and different content into a single database, and allow VR users to seamlessly explore either the joint collection or individual subcollections. This requires working on the system both in the user interface (Unity/VR) and the server (C#/PostgreSQL).