Digital Minister Questioned His Avatar
03/08/2024Bavaria's new Digital Minister Dr Fabian Mehring paid his first visit to the University of Würzburg. He was visibly impressed by the projects and achievements of the XR Hub.
The Free State of Bavaria has set up so-called XR Hubs in Würzburg, Nuremberg and Munich. They are dedicated to investigating and further developing the latest eXtended Reality (XR) technologies and publicising their potential applications in business and society. The virtual worlds of XR can be used in areas such as healthcare and education.
The Würzburg XR Hub is based at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU). It is headed by Professor Marc Latoschik, Chair of Human-Computer Interaction, and Carolin Wienrich, Professor of Psychology of Intelligent Interactive Systems.
Presentation in the New CAIDAS Building
The Free State of Bavaria has been funding the XR Hub Würzburg with 1.7 million euros since 2019. Reason enough for the new Bavarian Digital Minister Dr Fabian Mehring (Freie Wähler) to take a closer look at the work of the XR Hub on site. Mehring, who comes from Augsburg, has been in office since November 2023.
Marc Latoschik and Carolin Wienrich welcomed the minister to the new building of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (CAIDAS) on the North Campus on 1 March 2024. After the one-hour presentation, the guest was visibly impressed by the diverse projects and successes of the JMU team.
XR Hub Cooperates With Berkeley and Stanford
"Write that: Berkeley and Stanford as free riders of Würzburg research," Mehring said with a wink to the journalists present. He had previously learnt that the JMU teams had been able to gain the two renowned US universities as cooperation partners - for the joint further development of a protection mechanism against identity theft in virtual social environments. This project has its roots in the XR Hub Würzburg.
Marc Latoschik also mentioned the outstanding results in the latest Computer Science Ranking: In the research field of "Virtual Reality", Würzburg is ranked 1st in Germany, 3rd in Europe and 6th worldwide. The Minister was delighted: "A clear beacon in Europe and the world, what is being achieved here is extraordinary!"
Encounter With 106 Cameras in the Avatar Scanner
At the beginning of his visit, Fabian Mehring had a very special photo opportunity: the XR Hub team guided him into an avatar scanner, in which 106 cameras photographed the minister's body from all angles.
Scanning and creating Mehring's personalised avatar only took around 15 minutes. This also allowed the minister to immerse himself in a virtual reality application in which his avatar was linked to an artificial intelligence (GPT). The minister asked his counterpart in a virtual high-rise office in real time what he does for a living and immediately received a job description of the Bavarian Minister of Digitalisation as a spoken response.
The underlying project is researching where and in what form people could encounter artificial intelligence in the future - beyond the predominant practice of requesting text information from input windows. In addition to the technical aspect, the focus is also on which forms of encounter are most pleasant for human users. In general, the combination of technology and psychology is a hallmark not only of the XR Hub, but of the entire JMU Institute Human-Computer-Media.
Weblinks
XR Hub Würzburg: https://xr-hub.hci.uni-wuerzburg.de/
Chair of Human-Computer Interaction https://hci.uni-wuerzburg.de/
Professorship of Psychology of Intelligent Interactive Systems https://www.mcm.uni-wuerzburg.de/piis/
JMU Institute Human-Computer-Media https://www.mcm.uni-wuerzburg.de/
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