Geelong Alumni Event – Presented by Dr Ben Horan

Virtual Reality (VR) offers significant benefit to a range of applications including education, training, tourism, visualisation, product design and entertainment. Visual and auditory sensor stimulation provides compelling virtual experiences although they lack the stimulation of other important sensory modalities such as touch and smell. Technologies able to interact with these other sensory modalities currently remain relatively limited or non-existent in today’s range of VR systems.

Dr Horan’s will describe how VR experiences interacting with the human’s haptic sensory modality, i.e. the sense of touch and feel, can help achieve things not otherwise possible.

The seminar will be followed by drinks and canapés, so you can connect with other Deakin Alumni and Cloud Students.

Dr Ben Horan is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Engineering, Deakin University, Course Director for the Bachelor of Mechatronics Engineering, and the Director of the Centre for Advanced Design in Engineering Training (CADET) Virtual Reality (VR) laboratory. His technical expertise lies in mechatronics, robotics, virtual reality and soft computing. He also is a skilled technical communicator. 

Dr Horan has received a number of grants and accolades for his research working including an ARC Linkage Grant with the Australia Council for the Arts, and an Australian Academy of Science Early Career Researcher Fellowship undertaken at Seoul National University, South Korea.