Chauncey Frend

Have you noticed the hype towards virtual reality (VR) technology lately? How about augmented reality or even mixed reality? All three of these technology tools are related. The core principle that these tools share is the ability for users to experience data. The maturity of experiential technologies in 2017 has reached a critical mass for education. The UITS Advanced Visualization Lab (AVL) is turning 20 years old this year. The AVL has directly supported IU researchers since the very beginning with VR technology. For two decades the AVL as been on the lookout for the best ways to share VR technology at scale with the entire IU community. This new initiative has started on the Bloomington campus in 2016 in the form of VR technologies being installed in classrooms known as the Reality Labs. Reality Labs are now being installed on the IUPUI campus. Students, faculty, and staff will find these reality labs stocked with the latest in VR systems and applications allowing them to explore tools that extend their own respected fields. VR applications installed in all of the Reality Labs have been sourced for art, geography, engineering, business, history, entertainment, biology, and many more are being tested and added each month. This talk will focus on the near future of experiential technology at IU and the currently available resources.

Biography: Chauncey Frend is the lead IUPUI research support staff for Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality technologies in the Advanced Visualization Laboratory. He is also the founder of CYUTIL, a technology company in Greenwood, IN dedicated to advancing cyber-physical applications of VR/AR/MR. He is the inventor of the cy.PIPES control platform patented by the Indiana University Research and Technology Corporation and in use as a research technology in the AVL. Frend holds a B.S. and M.S. from the IU School of Informatics and Computing. Read the Inside IU article about Frend.