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Date
21.10.2021 | 17:00 - 18:00 (CET)

AI4EU Cafe: Embodied online dancing and partying with digital characters

This AI4EU Cafe presents the European Innovation Council Pathfinder Project Carousel on the call topic : Social Interaction and AI

The Speakers are the Core team of this project: Philipp Slusallek (Executive Director DFKI Saarbrücken & Scientific Director of the research area on Agents and Simulated Reality); Kenny Mitchell (Technical Director of Rendering at Roblox and chair of Video Game Technology at Edinburgh Napier University);  Carmen Mac Williams (Director of Grassroots Arts),  Pieter van der Linden (President, VIVITNET), Monica Tamariz ( Assistant Professor in Psychology at Heriot-Watt University)
The partners of the Carousel project will present how they will develop and combine novel, original and imaginative combinations of Artificial Intelligence and immersive interaction technologies, people will be able to feel each other’s presence, touch, and movement, even if they are not in the same physical space.
Meaningful AI-driven digital characters able to interact autonomously with people will help the individuals to feel happy and dance with each other.

Speakers

Philipp Slusallek
Philipp Slusallek

Philipp Slusallek

Philipp Slusallek is Executive Director DFKI Saarbrücken & Scientific Director of the research area on Agents and Simulated Reality. He is also a fellow of Eurographics, a member of acatech (German National Academy of Science and Engineering), and a member of the European High‐Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence and co-founder of CLAIRE.

Enabling to realistically interact in a physical way with a remote person or a virtual character in real-time is a huge scientific challenge but also highly motivating for the entire Carousel team to make it work for everyone.

Kenny Mitchell

Kenny Mitchell is a Technical Director of Rendering at Roblox and chair of Video Game Technology at Edinburgh Napier University providing practical immersive media technology solutions with over 40 patents and 100+ peer reviewed technical papers. He is also co-founder/CTO of 3FINERY Ltd a spinout of Edinburgh Napier University bringing real world objects to life and CTO/non-executive Director of Cobra Simulation advising immersive technology products.

In CAROUSEL,  Kenny holds the central position of Scientific Coordinator

Pieter van der Linden

President of VIVITnet, Paris based startup in technology and culture, Pieter is leading Dissemination, exploitation and innovation in CAROUSEL. Engineer, Researcher, entrepreneur and consultant, Pieter has started many years ago as researcher on graphics and speech in man machine interaction at “Centre Mondial pour L’informatique et les Ressources Humaines”.  Participating to Carousel, Pieter is very happy to go way beyond working with human feelings, musical rhythm and creative expression.

Monica Tamariz

Monica Tamariz is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Heriot-Watt University interested in the development and evolution of communication systems. She is also a dancer and teacher of Argentine tango. Within CAROUSEL+ she hopes to test the communicative affordances of the tactile channel in partner dance and beyond, and to explore how dancing remotely can promote joy.

Carmen Mac Williams

Carmen is the Project Manager of CAROUSEL and the Director of the company Grassroots Arts and Research in Cologne, Germany. Grassroots Arts is a spin off company from the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) and is a media research company. Carmen is the driving force behind CAROUSEL+ and she brought her creative vision to the project. She invited the members of the consortium to come together as a team to realize CAROUSEL’s vision and she is excited to lead as Project Manager the concept and use case design and participate in the test pilots.