OpenPTrack at IEEE VR Los Angeles


UCLA researcher & PhD student Randy Illum presented Mixed-Reality Barriers: Person-Tracking in K-12 Schools at the IEEE VR conference in Los Angeles on March 19. The paper, cowritten with GSE&IS PhD student Maggie Dahn, details the use of OpenPTrack in classrooms at two schools—one, a university laboratory elementary school, and the other, a public charter school.

Illum’s presentation was given as part of IEEE VR’s Workshop on K-12 Embodied Learning through Virtual & Augmented Reality, which focuses on “educational experiences for the classroom of the future” that use virtual, augmented and mixed-reality technologies, such as those enabled by people tracking. 

Work with OpenPTrack at the laboratory school has been ongoing since 2014, as part of the NSF-funded Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (STEPand Interactive Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (iSTEPprojects. At the public charter school, Dahn worked with a visual arts teacher to create a 10-week course of study in digital mask making. The lessons included students working with an online authoring system, which led to a performance in an VR environment integrating body-based interactions using OpenPTrack. .