Congratulations to Humayun Khan, who has passed his thesis for the Masters in Human Interface Technology (MHIT) program at the HIT Lab NZ.  His thesis focused on improving users’ interaction with virtual worlds by enabling them to use their own hand and gestures to interact with virtual environments.

 

He did his undergrad in Electrical Engineering from National University of Singapore(NUS).
In NUS, he worked on Image based 3D reconstruction and auto camera calibration using simple
user interaction. After his undergrad, he worked for Continental Automotive Singapore
as Software System Engineer from 2011 to 2016. In Continental Automive, he worked on developing
embedded systems for instrument panel clusters. His research interests include interaction in VR space, hand gesture based interaction systems, image based 3D reconstruction, computer vision and HCI in general.

Besides research, Humayun likes playing squash, traveling, watching movies, and spending time with
friends and family.

Thesis Title: Hand gestures based interaction in an Immersive Cinematic Environment

Senior Supervisor: Rob Lindeman

Abstract:

With new head-mounted displays (HMDs) in the consumer market, immersive virtual reality is becoming ubiquitous. New processing and display technologies have solved HMD’s latency and resolution problem, but there are still some factors which impede HMD usage. One of them is a lack of interaction with the real world as users are not able to bring their body or parts of their body into the virtual world. This leaves them with a feeling that they are passively observing the virtual world and are not being able to actively engage with it. This thesis will explore how to bring the most vital part of the real world which is the user’s body, the hands, into a virtual environment, and how does gesture-based interaction affect the user’s level of immersion.