Google funds INESC TEC project in the digital media area

Google funds INESC TEC project in the digital media area

AmbiVideo360 (Augmented experiences in interactive 360º videos), as it is called, is the new INESC TEC project in the digital media area that will receive a EUR 49,990 fund by Google.

10th April 2019

The goal is to continue to invest on the augmented experience research, in spatial and audio terms, in interactive 360º videos. This way, AmbiVideo360 will bring closer the content editors and the viewers for the creation and the experience of interactive and immersive journalistic pieces.

The researchers from INESC TEC’s Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics (CSIG) realised that the augmented journalistic pieces have an attention to the narrative that is often missing in shorter news reports. On the other hand, the interactive 360º videos strengthen the connection between viewer and story, providing freedom and immersion to the viewer. However, these types of videos pose a challenge to the storyteller, who loses control of the viewer’s attention, thus hindering the transmission of the message. In that regard, the researchers wanted to invest on innovative ways of transmitting an immersive narrative to the viewers and of attracting their attention without disrupting the experience.

This way, AmbiVideo360 will explore technologies such as spatialised audio to direct the user’s attention, to interconnect stories through portals between 360º environments and other navigation means.

“We are proposing a framework that enables the creation of multimodal immersive and interactive 360º stories, where the narrative is transmitted through several visual and audio cues and can be explored in an interactive way. The narrative cues will explore spatialised sound, particularly to attract and focus the attention on specific elements of the narrative. The narrative will be further extended by allowing interaction between scene elements and between multiple scenes”, explains Rui Rodrigues, researcher from CSIG and one of the people responsible for the project.

The team that will develop AmbiVideo360 is also composed of Rui Rodrigues, Rui Nóbrega, João Jacob, Eduardo Magalhães, Teresa Matos, Marisa Pinheiro, Filipe Rodrigues and José Barbosa.

This is already the third INESC TEC project that is funded by Google in the digital media area. Projects Stop PropagHate and AugmentedVideo360 (http://av360.inesctec.pt) had already been distinguished in previous rounds promoted by Digital News Initiative (DNI), a partnership between Google and European news publishers that aims to support high quality journalism through technology and innovation.

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC and UP-FEUP.