What Happens at the Border Between Real and Virtual Worlds - The MR Project and Other Research Activities in Japan

This paper is an extended abstract for the invited talk at ISAR 2000 that describes major topics of the MR Project now propelling in Japan and overview of newly started themes. Major results of the project and other related research activities in Japan will be presented at the talk with video. MR PROJECT AND ITS IMPACT We have been participating the “Key-Technology Research Project on Mixed Reality Systems (MR Project)” in Japan. This project is expected to produce an innovative information technology that could be pragmatically utilized in the first decade of the 21st century while breaking a limitation on the traditional virtual reality (VR) technology. “Mixed reality (MR)” is a kind of VR, but a broader concept than “augmented reality (AR)” which augments the real worlds with synthetic electronic data. On the opposite side, there is a term “augmented virtuality (AV)” which enhances or augments virtual environments with data from real worlds. MR covers a continuum from AR to AV. This concept inherits the definition of MR stated by Paul Milgram [1]. As the core organization of the project, the Mixed Reality Systems Laboratory Inc. (MR Lab) was launched in January 1997 on the investment by the Japanese government and Canon Inc. This national project is planned to be extended to March 2001 collaborating with three universities, Univ. of Tokyo (Prof. M. Hirose), Univ. of Tsukuba (Prof. Y. Ohta), and Hokkaido Univ. (Prof. T. Ifukube). The outline of this project and the results of first two years are stated in [2]. The impact of MR Project is proving to be not insignificant, as it reinvigorates the related R&D activities. For example, the Special Interest Group on Mixed Reality was formed within the Virtual Reality Society of Japan (VRSJ). In March 1999, the First International Symposium on Mixed Reality was held at Yokohama, Japan [3]. In addition, a panel named “Mixed Reality: Where Real and Virtual Worlds Meet” gave a good opportunity to discuss the state-of-the-art technology and attracted a great deal of attention at SIGGRAPH 99 [4]. We also presented most recent results of our MR Project in a session called “When Reality Meets Virtuality” at Imagina 2000 in Monaco. The Second International Symposium on Mixed Reality (ISMR 2001) will be held in March 2001 again in Yokohama [6]. Since the time coincides with the finishing period of the MR Project for about four years, we are planning to present all the results of our project there. IEEE VR 2001 will be held at the same time and place. We are expecting various research results and a lot of technical demonstrations related to MR technology from other groups.