The Future of Virtual Reality and the Augmented Human

Find out what the future holds for the Augmented Human and Virtual Reality, with researchers from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute.

What's it all about?

Join Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality pioneer Professor Mark Billinghurst, Dr Alys Clark and Associate Professor Suranga Nanayakkara from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute as they discuss their latest projects and vision for the future.

How can technology recognise our emotions and help us better understand what other people are seeing, hearing and feeling? How can we design devices and technologies that learn and adapt to us instead of the other way around? How can a virtual pregnancy save lives?

Professor Billinghurst is a legend in the field of AR. He developed the ARToolKit – the world’s first open-source AR software developers’ kit – in 2001 and has been pushing the boundaries of AR and VR technology for more than 20 years. He now leads ABI's Empathic Computing Laboratory.

Dr Alys Clark is leading an international project to create the world's first virtual pregnancy. Her team will develop this virtual model to research blood vessels in the uterus, with the goal of improving diagnoses and treatment of problems such as fetal growth restriction, where babies are born abnormally small.

Professor Suranga Nanayakkara founded the Augmented Human Lab to explore ways of creating ‘enabling’ human-computer interfaces as natural extensions of our body, mind and behaviour. He is among that rare breed of engineers that brings a sense of “humanity” to technology.