Mathematics, Virtual Reality, Art + Science

Speaker: Associate Professor Tomasz Bednarz (CSIRO Data61, ACEMS QUT)

Immersive environments, and particularly Virtual Reality (VR), are providing exciting new ways of seeing our world. One challenge is the effective application of this technology to solve large scale problems, and make this world a better place. I will present how we combined visual and statistical capabilities to make that change happen. We use VR to elicit information from "virtual scientists" (VS) and hence facilitate "VR-VS science". In late October, we sent our team of scientists to the Amazon in Peru, to capture data using various stereo cameras, 360-degree cameras, andambisonic surround sound recorders. Having such recordings, we can now bring the forest to the international community of experts through VR interfaces, and elicit information to gain insight into scientific problems of interest, which in our case is to map the presence of jaguars throughout the Peruvian Amazon. The project effectively links together science and statistical modelling with visualization, 360-degree film, and VR. I will also show how citizen science and VR can be use for monitoring health of GBR, and couple of other applications where applied mathematics links with art, visualization and beyond.