Roger J. Hubbold

Position

Professor of Virtual Environments
School of Computer Science
University of Manchester

Research Group Leader
Advanced Interfaces Group (AIG)

Publications

You can access my recent publications, and retrieve copies of some of them, ordered by year, or by type (journal, conference etc).

Contacting me at work

email: roger.hubbold@manchester.ac.uk
web: http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk
Tel: +44(0)161 275 6158
Fax:+44(0)161 275 6204
Postal address:

School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom

Teaching

I have general responsibility for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on computer graphics, human-computer interfaces, and visualisation. Currently I teach COMP30071 (Advanced Computer Graphics), together with Steve Pettifer.

PhD Students

Please note that I am no longer accepting new students for PhD study. Those wishing to join the Advanced Interfaces Group should contact one of my academic colleagues to discuss potential supervision.

Research Interests

My main research interest is the design of architectures, algorithms and interactive techniques for virtual environments. This includes massive model rendering, locomotion, navigation and interaction in virtual worlds, and interactive manipulation techniques for 3D interfaces. I have a particular interest in the application of virtual environment technologies to demanding real-world problems.

Currently, I am PI on a project called Daedalus, which is concerned with constructing perceptually faithfull 3D models of real scenes from digital photographs. The project is funded by the EPSRC. Here's an example of a Mayan monument at Chichen Itza in Mexico, reconstructed from photographs taken by my colleague Mashhuda Glencross.

Together with my colleague Aphrodite Galata, I have become interested in using video cameras for tracking hands in order to build unencumbered interfaces for 3D interaction. Here's an example from real-time handtracking. The 3D skeleton is fitted automatically to the hand, captured with a low-cost webcam.

Picture of a hand being tracked in real time.

Earlier interests include parallel algorithms for rendering, scientific and medical visualization, and global illumination.

You can find details of projects I am involved in, and more, by visiting the home pages of the Advanced Interfaces Group.

External collaborators and partners

I believe that research into virtual environments is best conducted by studying their application to real-world problems. To inform our research we have collaborated with several external companies and research groups. In addition to the links below, you can find images and movies illustrating results of this work on our gallery pages.

In the Daedalus project we are collaborating with the Digital Lab at the University of Warwick, Napper Architects in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Greg Ward of Anyhere Software.
On the CoHap project, we collaborated with the Effective Virtual Environments Reseach Group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, following my sabbatical stay there in 2000, and we maintain links with them.
On the ARIS project we collaborated with FhG-IGD (Germany), INRIA/Loria (France), University of Bristol (UK), and IKEA (Greece).
In the DIVIPRO project we collaborated with Sener and Labein (Spain), DLR and KL Technik (Germany), Eurocopter (France), and University of Salford (UK).
In the eSCAPE project we collaborated with The Department of Psychology at Manchester University, the Department of Computer Science at Lancaster University, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science in Stockholm, and ZKM in Karlsruhe. The project included a substantial development of the Deva software for distributed collaborative virtual environments.

Earlier collaborators have included:

CADCentre Ltd (now Aveva Solutions Ltd), (Cambridge, UK), who are world leaders in CAD software for the process plant industry (VRLSA project).
Brown & Root Limited (London, part of the Halliburton Group), who are a major engineering company involved in the design and construction of off-shore oil and gas platforms, as well as other major engineering projects (VRLSA project).
Sharp Laboratories of Europe Ltd (Oxford, UK), the European research laboratory of the Japanese consumer product manufacturer. Sharp Labs have developed a number of novel stereoscopic 3D display technologies, and these have been used in some of our work (VRLSA and ASD projects).
The Christie Hospital in Manchester. This is the leading cancer hospital for the North-West of England (ASD project).
Greater Manchester Police. We collaborated with the Police on the reconstruction of virtual environments representing real scenes of crime (REVEAL project).