Internship Opportunities at the Institute for Creative Technologies

Research Assistant, Stretching Space in Virtual Reality

This project involves developing and testing new redirected walking techniques - perceptual illusions that enable users to walk through expansive immersive virtual environments in relatively limited physical spaces. Duties will involve brainstorming and rapid prototyping of novel VR interaction/locomotion techniques, developing virtual environments using the Unity3D game engine, running user studies, and analyzing experiment data.

Preferred Skills:
- Programming in either C++ or C#.
- Familiar with experimental design and user study procedures
- Prior experience with virtual reality technology (e.g. head-mounted displays, motion tracking) and game engines is preferredtion tracking, game engines) is preferred.
- Ability to analyze basic statistical data with SPSS (e.g. t-test, ANOVA) is a plus, but not necessarily required

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Research Assistant, Virtual Human Displays

Research and development of display techniques and technologies for presenting virtual human characters in immersive environments. Virtual human characters play an important role in immersive training, but it is still difficult to realistically represent virtual characters in terms of visual display, audio, and haptics. We are particularly interested in developing and refining display techniques and technologies to better elicit naturalistic social, cognitive, and emotional reactions in trainees.

The intern would assist on tasks such as developing new presentation technologies for virtual characters, implementing virtual human interaction scenarios, designing and conducting user studies, and preparing results for publication. Use our lab’s tools, such as the depth sensing cameras, motion capture systems, head mounted displays, large projection screens, and a fabrication lab to help develop new methods of presenting virtual characters.

Additionally:
- Design and implement new interaction scenarios with virtual human characters to test those new presentation techniques and technologies.
- Help design and conduct user studies investigating human-virtual human interaction.
- Help derive and present results for publication for a relevant conference or journal.

Preferred Skills:
- Familiarity with Unity or similar game engines.
- Programming experience in languages like C/C++, C#, or Python.
- Development experience with Android or iPhone iOS is a plus.
- Prior experience with conducting and designing human subjects research is a plus.

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There are also many other internships available with other groups at the ICT. More details can be found at: http://ict.usc.edu/internships

The deadline to apply is February 19, 2012.