Guest Lecture: Steven LaValle, State of the art virtual reality

CS department's public guest lecture on 'State of the art virtual reality (VR)'. The lecture is open to everyone free-of-charge.

Steven LaValle
Vice President and Chief Scientist of VR/AR/MR at Huawei Technologies
Professor, University of Illinois

Steven LaValle is Vice President and Chief Scientist of VR/AR/MR (virtual/augmented/mixed reality) at Huawei Technologies. He is also Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering, and has taught at Stanford University and Iowa State University, prior to joining the University of Illinois in 2001.  He has published over 150 scientific articles, and 3 books, Planning Algorithms (2006), Sensing and Filtering (2012), and Virtual Reality (2017). His books are available online for free. His Research interests are robotics, virtual reality, sensing, planning, and human-computer  interaction. He is most known in robotics for his introduction of Rapidly exploring Random Trees (RRTs), one of the most widely use algorithms in the field.  Regarding virtual reality, he was an early founder of Oculus VR and the chief scientist; there he developed patented tracking technology and led a team of perceptual psychologists to provide principled approaches to VR system calibration, health and safety, and the design of comfortable user experiences.  He is also an active angel investor and adviser to startup companies and venture capitalists.