Merging the real and the virtual in Canterbury

STACY SQUIRES/The Press

HIT LAB: Director Mark Billinghurst, left, and acting lab manager, Ken Beckman, demonstrate VisionSpace Theatre, a three-screen immersive stereo-projection system that enables groups of people to view and intuitively interact with 3D virtual data.

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Mark Billinghurst and his team at Hit Lab is taking computing in bold new directions. Martine Cusack reports.

Meet Mark Billinghurst. He wants to transport you to a new world.

Simply step through the portal – the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (Hit Lab NZ) cunningly camouflaged within the Old Maths Building at the University of Canterbury.

Among the maze of rooms packed with cool technology, Billinghurst is fostering an environment of infinite possibilities. From augmented reality to immersive virtual reality; from wearable computing to user interfaces – welcome to his world.

"I was one of the founders (of the HIT Lab), in 2002," recalls Billinghurst, the research lab's director, as he settles among the technological clutter of his academic-style office on the Ilam campus.

The lab is a partner of the world-renowned Hit Lab US, based at the University of Washington, in Seattle.

"We are a research lab which has the focus of essentially improving people's experience with technology – often times called interaction design. (We) design how people experience technology. Also, (we) improve the human-computer interface," he elaborates.

The softly-spoken Billinghurst aims to "revolutionise the way people interact with computers" by creating cutting-edge interfaces to "enhance human capabilities; vanquish human limitations and increase the flexibility and utility of the industry's existing products".

It's all in a day's work for the world-leading researcher, who has

"just turned 40" and devotes most of his life to his role.

Billinghurst's "cutting-edge approach" is slicing open a ripple in time towards the merger of real and virtual worlds – enabling users in different parts of the world to share the same reality and work as a unit.

Billinghurst landed in Christchurch via Washington state from a small-city start in the shadow of Mount Taranaki. Born in New Plymouth and schooled at New Plymouth Boys' High, Billinghurst is a two-time graduate of the University of Waikato – gaining a bachelor of computing and mathematical science, first class honours, in 1990, and a masters in applied mathematics and physics in 1992.

"When I was at the University of Waikato, I was hoping to go on to do theoretical physics, but around that same time virtual reality was getting a lot of publicity. As part of my astrophysics qualification, I needed to do some computer graphics," Billinghurst recalls.

"I was doing work on visualising solar flares and so I needed to do computer graphics to draw 3-D models of solar flares and I got really interested in that. And then through that, virtual reality – and that kind of lead me to the Hit Lab at the University of Washington.

"At the time, it was one of the only virtual reality research labs in the US.

"I didn't expect to end up in New Zealand running my own lab, but I knew I wanted to do work in the computer-interface field."

Billinghurst joined Hit Lab US in the early 1990s as an intern.

He stayed there for eight years and left there in 2002, to come to Christchurch.

In 2002, he completed his PhD in electrical engineering, at the University of Washington. As part of the research for his thesis titled Shared Space: Exploration in Collaborative Augmented Reality, Billinghurst invented the Magic Book – an animated children's book that comes to life when viewed through a lightweight head-mounted display (HMD).

During his time with Hit Lab US, Billinghurst worked on a number of ground-breaking projects.

" I was involved with looking at conversational agents – virtual characters that you could talk to using speech recognition; I was involved with medical simulation – developing virtual-reality simulators for medicine," he says.

He also worked with augmented reality, "which is what I am doing now, which is overlaying computer graphics in the real world".

He has also helped evolve wearable computing, and collaborative interfaces – "how you can develop systems that support face-to-face and remote collaboration".

However, the world of virtual reality soon captured Billinghurst's imagination and opened the door to interaction design. "Through virtual reality, I got interested more in the broader area of interaction design, which kind of merges a design focus with the computer-science focus," he says.

"I set the research agenda for the lab, and then I am also tasked with raising the funding to achieve that agenda. It's a very diverse job, really.

"Hit Lab really tries to exist as a bridge between academia and industry."

Much of the lab's work is already finding an international audience.

"First of all, we are doing some really interesting research in augmented reality, particularly in the areas of mobile phones ... also in the areas of education and augmented reality; and in the areas of what's, I guess you could say, interaction techniques – how you interact with virtual objects.

"We are also doing some very interesting applied-research projects, particularly in how you can use computer vision to enhance interaction with computers; new types of collaborative interfaces, so the next generation from video-conferencing.

"The area we are targeting for that is for gaming and for advertising.

"Also, we are doing some work in health and mobile phones. Looking at how mobile phones can be used for health monitors.

"The next generation interface work is important because the New Zealand Government has just given a lot of funding to establish a high bandwidth link between research institutes and universities. It's a question of how – once you have got that – how will that change the natural collaboration."

Along the way, his remarkable work has been recognised both in New Zealand and on the world stage. In 2001, he was awarded a Discover Magazine Award, for entertainment, for creating the Magic Book technology. He was also selected as one of eight leading New Zealand innovators and entrepreneurs to be showcased at the New Zealand Innovation Pavilion at the America's Cup Village from November 2002 to March 2003.

In 2004, he was nominated for a prestigious World Technology Network (WTN) award in the education category, and in 2005, he was appointed to the New Zealand Government's Growth and Innovation Advisory Board.

And every day, he opens more portals to his new world.

- © Fairfax NZ News