Pulse: An Implementation of Emotionally-Aware VR Gaming (Group 28)

Team Members

• Andrew Tran (Electrical Engineering)
• Reigan Alcaria (Electrical Engineering)
• Jude Collins (Computer Science and Engineering)
• Jong Seon “Sean” Lee (Electrical Engineering)

Project Mentors

• Professor Ahmed Eltawil
• Ahmed Khorshid

Pulse is an effort to integrate player emotions in games (mainly focused on virtual reality games) through the application of digital signal processing (DSP) and machine learning techniques to biological signals. Despite the depth of immersion and presence that modern virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) grant to users, emotional connections in games remain a one-way connection: from the game to the player. The sheer visual immersion VR HMDs offer to players helps them feel some additional emotional immersion in in-game worlds through added presence, but the inability for these games to actually read player emotions inhibits true emotional connections in VR games. Pulse not only seeks to break down this barrier, but it will also explore the potential that affective (i.e., emotionally-aware) games offer in both entertainment as well as fear training and therapy.

You can check out our project at https://pulseuci.wordpress.com/.