Dr. Kiyoshi Kiyokawa visited CrossWorlds on december 11th and gave two very inspiring talks about Head Mounted Display Technologies for Augmented Reality and Future Directions of Augmented Reality Display Technologies. Besides the crossworlds team, the audience also included interested colleagues from other departments as well as many students.

We thank all helpers, especially for the catering and tech support. Furthermore a big thank you to the VR/ AR team members Peter Schulz, Florian Polster, Daniel Lohmeier von Laer and Jesper Bellenbaum.

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The MOOC with additional learning materials will be available as soon as possible. For further information please contact Crossworlds Member Steve Funke. Abstracts for the talks can be found after the jump.

An Introduction to Head Mounted Display Technologies for Augmented Reality
This course introduced design and principles of head mounted displays (HMDs), as well as their state-of-the-art examples, for augmented reality (AR). First a brief history of head mounted displays as well as general display technologies in virtual and augmented reality were introduced. Then, human vision system, and application examples of see-through HMDs were introduced. Designs and principles of HMDs, such as typical configurations of optics, typical display elements, and major categories of HMDs have been discussed. Typical characteristics of HMDs, such as resolution, field of view, distortion, perception, safety, social acceptance issues were explained in depth by giving a rich set of examples of the state of the art HMD studies.

Future Directions of Augmented Reality Display Technologies
Following the introductory course in the morning, this course introduced new directions and challenges in display technologies for augmented reality. First, context awareness and sensing issues were discussed, that are crucial in providing right information at a right timing to make AR a success. Next, technologies for more flexible mixture of virtual and real were discussed. Traditional AR has only overlaid virtual information on top of the real environment. However, recent technologies are making it possible to flexibly ‘remap’ (remove, cut, copy, distort etc.) the real environment to produce personal, tailored reality. Finally, we discussed how and when we should and should *not* use AR for healthier, happier life.