Robert Xiao
YOU?
Author Swipe
View article: TravelTales: Reflecting on Meaningful Travel through Digital Scrapbooking and Journaling
TravelTales: Reflecting on Meaningful Travel through Digital Scrapbooking and Journaling Open
Travel experiences represent enjoyable periods in one's life, but also offer opportunities for thoughtful reflection and personal growth. To facilitate these insights and enhance self-understanding, we developed TravelTales, a smartphone a…
View article: VIBES: Exploring Viewer Spatial Interactions as Direct Input for Livestreamed Content
VIBES: Exploring Viewer Spatial Interactions as Direct Input for Livestreamed Content Open
Livestreaming has rapidly become a popular online pastime, with real-time interaction between streamer and viewer being a key motivating feature. However, viewers have traditionally had limited opportunity to directly influence the streame…
View article: Entertainers Between Real and Virtual - Investigating Viewer Interaction, Engagement, and Relationships with Avatarized Virtual Livestreamers
Entertainers Between Real and Virtual - Investigating Viewer Interaction, Engagement, and Relationships with Avatarized Virtual Livestreamers Open
Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) are avatar-based livestreamers that are voiced and played by human actors. VTubers have been popular in East Asia for years and have more recently seen widespread international growth. Despite their emergent pop…
View article: HaloTouch: Using IR Multi-Path Interference to Support Touch Interactions with General Surfaces
HaloTouch: Using IR Multi-Path Interference to Support Touch Interactions with General Surfaces Open
Sensing touch on arbitrary surfaces has long been a goal of ubiquitous computing, but often requires instrumenting the surface. Depth camera-based systems have emerged as a promising solution for minimizing instrumentation, but at the cost…
View article: How We See Changes How We Feel: Investigating the Effect of Visual Point-of-View on Decision-Making in VR Environments
How We See Changes How We Feel: Investigating the Effect of Visual Point-of-View on Decision-Making in VR Environments Open
Virtual reality (VR) can immerse users into engaging experiences, affording opportunities to study behaviour in simulated contexts such as decision-making processes. However, methodological research into designing meaningful VR experiences…
View article: Surface Alkali-Modified Nano-CeO2 for Atmospherically Catalytic Polycondensation of CO2 and Diol
Surface Alkali-Modified Nano-CeO2 for Atmospherically Catalytic Polycondensation of CO2 and Diol Open
The polycondensation of carbon dioxide and diols under atmospheric pressure has significant appeal, thus making the study of catalysts in this process very important. Here, a series of CeO2-X catalysts (X = 9/11/13) with surface modificati…
View article: Press A or Wave: User Expectations for NPC Interactions and Nonverbal Behaviour in Virtual Reality
Press A or Wave: User Expectations for NPC Interactions and Nonverbal Behaviour in Virtual Reality Open
Non-playable characters (NPCs) are important in games, as they can provide guidance to the player, create social engagement, and advance the game's narrative. Although much research exists regarding NPC interactions for traditional gaming …
View article: VirtualNexus: Enhancing 360-Degree Video AR/VR Collaboration with Environment Cutouts and Virtual Replicas
VirtualNexus: Enhancing 360-Degree Video AR/VR Collaboration with Environment Cutouts and Virtual Replicas Open
Asymmetric AR/VR collaboration systems bring a remote VR user to a local AR user's physical environment, allowing them to communicate and work within a shared virtual/physical space. Such systems often display the remote environment throug…
View article: Lies, Deceit, and Hallucinations: Player Perception and Expectations Regarding Trust and Deception in Games
Lies, Deceit, and Hallucinations: Player Perception and Expectations Regarding Trust and Deception in Games Open
Lying and deception are important parts of social interaction; when applied to storytelling mediums such as video games, such elements can add complexity and intrigue. We developed a game, "AlphaBetaCity", in which non-playable characters …
View article: Streamlining Image Editing with Layered Diffusion Brushes
Streamlining Image Editing with Layered Diffusion Brushes Open
Denoising diffusion models have emerged as powerful tools for image manipulation, yet interactive, localized editing workflows remain underdeveloped. We introduce Layered Diffusion Brushes (LDB), a novel training-free framework that enable…
View article: SurfShare
SurfShare Open
Shared Mixed Reality experiences allow two co-located users to collaborate on both physical and digital tasks with familiar social protocols. However, extending the same to remote collaboration is limited by cumbersome setups for aligning …
View article: Diffusion Brush: A Latent Diffusion Model-based Editing Tool for AI-generated Images
Diffusion Brush: A Latent Diffusion Model-based Editing Tool for AI-generated Images Open
Text-to-image generative models have made remarkable advancements in generating high-quality images. However, generated images often contain undesirable artifacts or other errors due to model limitations. Existing techniques to fine-tune g…
View article: AutoDepthNet: High Frame Rate Depth Map Reconstruction using Commodity Depth and RGB Cameras
AutoDepthNet: High Frame Rate Depth Map Reconstruction using Commodity Depth and RGB Cameras Open
Depth cameras have found applications in diverse fields, such as computer vision, artificial intelligence, and video gaming. However, the high latency and low frame rate of existing commodity depth cameras impose limitations on their appli…
View article: FoldMold: Automating Papercraft for Fast DIY Casting of Scalable Curved Shapes
FoldMold: Automating Papercraft for Fast DIY Casting of Scalable Curved Shapes Open
Rapid iteration is crucial to effective prototyping; yet making certain objects - large, smoothly curved and/or of specific material - requires specialized equipment or considerable time. To improve access to casting such objects, we devel…
View article: LightAnchors
LightAnchors Open
Augmented reality requires precise and instant overlay of digital information onto everyday objects. We present our work on LightAnchors, a new method for displaying spatially-anchored data. We take advantage of pervasive point lights - su…
View article: MeCap: Whole-Body Digitization for Low-Cost VR/AR Headsets
MeCap: Whole-Body Digitization for Low-Cost VR/AR Headsets Open
Low-cost, smartphone-powered VR/AR headsets are becoming more popular. These basic devices - little more than plastic or cardboard shells - lack advanced features, such as controllers for the hands, limiting their interactive capability. M…