BU Research Blog

Dr Hui Liang’s paper, co-authored with Dr Jian Chang, Ms Shujie Deng, Ms Can Chen, Prof Ruofeng Tong and Prof Jian Jun Zhang, titled “Exploitation of Novel Multiplayer Gesture-based Interaction and Virtual Puppetry for Digital Storytelling to Develop Children’s Narrative Skills” was selected as the Best Paper (4th prize) in the international conference ACM SIGGRAPH VRCAI 2015 in Kobe, Japan.

Dr Hui Liang is an EU FP7 funded Marie Curie Fellow at the National Centre for Computer Animation for a two year research programme “AniM”( http://www.euanim.org/) which is supervised by Dr Jian Chang and Prof Jianjun Zhang. “AniM” – Enhanced Computer Animation by Fusing Computer Graphics Technology with Smart Data Management aims to improve the status quo by developing the “next generation computer animation data management and related techniques” through knowledge transfer and development.

The award winning paper presented a prototype of a novel multiplayer system for interactive digital storytelling assisted with virtual puppetry to provide natural interaction/control and immersive experience when narrating stories. The system integrates useful Virtual Reality techniques and novel hardware, which aims to inspire the development of young children’s abilities, such as narrative skills, cognitive skills, motor coordination and collaboration through storytelling. It integrates motion sensing technology, computer animation techniques and cloud-based network solution. The development of the prototype demonstrates the possibility of combining novel HCI and digital storytelling to inspire children’s teaching and learning practices.

Read the whole article at: http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/22879/