In Short

My research interest is in the area of distributed virtual reality applications and I am one of the prime architects of the Distributed Interactive Virtual Environment (DIVE ) platform. In particular, I focus on the following topics:

• How is it possible to add "life" to virtual environments? This includes a language for describing animations and behaviours.
• How can virtual environments be integrated with the World Wide Web? This includes mechanisms for the integration of different kind of medias.
• How can virtual environments scale to thousands of simultenous participants? This includes mechanisms for reducing network band-width use and for connecting together different sub-networks.

Daily Activities

Current and Recent Work

DIVE - The Distributed Interactive Virtual Environment is an internet-based multi-user VR system where participants navigate in 3D space and see, meet and interact with other users and applications. D IVE supports the development of virtual environments, user interfaces and applications based on shared 3D synthetic environments. D IVE is especially tuned to multi-user applications, where several networked participants interact over a network.

The PPM - Path Planning Map - is one way to let the user gain a larger context of the virtual environment. It povides him/her with a hand held miniature representation of the world, somewhat like a map in the real world. The PPM can be used for locating and orienting the user, searching for other users, and for moving directly to a point on the map. The PPM is one of the techniques for "natural" interaction in multi-user CAVE-like environments .
 

Old Work

• Adding audio teleconferencing in a virtual environment
• A realistic terrain module
• Virtually Telling Robots what to do
• WebShare - An attempt to synchronise several web browsers from a single controlling point.

Talks

Publications

• Anthony Steed, Jesper Mortensen and Emmanuel Frécon "Spelunking: Experiences using the DIVE System on CAVE-like Platforms ", In B. Frohlicj, J. Deisinger, and H-J. Bullinger, editors, Immersive Projection Technologies and Virtual Environments 2001, pages 153-164. Springer-Verlag/Wien, May 2001.
  
• Chris Greenhalgh, Adrian Bullock, Emmanuel Frécon, David Llyod and Anthony Steed " Making Networked Virtual Environments Work ", Presence, Vol. 10, Issue 2, April 2001.
  
• Emmanuel Frécon, Gareth Smith, Anthony Steed, Mårten Stenius and Olov Ståhl, " An Overview of the COVEN Platform ", Presence, Vol. 10, Issue 1, February 2001.
  
• Adrian Bullock, Anneli Avatare, Lennart Fahlén, Emmanuel Frécon, Pär Hansson, Bino Nord, Kristian Simsarian, Mårten Stenius, Olov Ståhl, Anders Wallberg, Karl-Petter Åkesson, "The Interactive Collaborative Environments Laboratory", Organisational overview at ACM CHI2000, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1-6 April 2000.
  
• Anthony Steed, Emmanuel Frécon, Anneli Avatare, Duncan Pemberton, Gareth Smith, " The London Travel Demonstrator ", VRST'99 - Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology 1999, pp 50-57, University College London, UK, December 20 - 22, 1999.
  
• Emmanuel Frécon, Chris Greenhalgh, Mårten Stenius, " The DiveBone - An Application-Level Network Architecture for Internet-Based CVEs ", VRST'99 - Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology 1999 , pp 58-65,  University College London, UK, December 20 - 22, 1999.
  
• Anthony Steed and Emmanuel Frécon, "Building and Supporting a Large-Scale Collaborative Virtual Environment", Proceedings of 6th UKVRSIG, University of Salford, 13th - 15th September 1999, p59-69.
  
• Emmanuel Frécon, Gareth Smith, " Semantic Behaviours in Collaborative Virtual Environments ". Virtual Environments'99 (EGVE'99), pp. 95-104, Vienna, Austria, 1999 .
  
• Véronique Normand, Christian Babski, Steve Benford, Adrian Bullock, Stéphane Carion, Yiorgos Chrysanthou, Nicolas Farcet, Emmanuel Frécon, John Harvey, Nico Kuijpers, Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Soraia Raupp-Musse, Tom Rodden, Mel Slater and Gareth Smith, " The COVEN project: Exploring Applicative, Technical and Usage Dimensions of Collaborative Virtual Environments ". 1999. PRESENCE, MIT Press, pp. 218-236.
  
• Emmanuel Frécon, Mårten Stenius, "DIVE: A scaleable network architecture for distributed virtual environments ", Distributed Systems Engineering Journal (DSEJ), 5 (1998), pp 91-100, Special Issue on Distributed Virtual Environments.
  
• Jolanda Tromp, Anthony Steed, Emmanuel Frecon, Adrian Bullock, Amela Sadagic and Mel Slater, "Small Group Behaviour Experiments in the Coven Project", IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 18, No. 6, November/December 1998 , pp.53-63, ISSN 0272-1716.
  
• Emmanuel Frécon, Anneli Avatare Nöu, " Building Distributed Virtual Environments to Support Collaborative Work ", 1998 ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST'98), pp. 105-113, Taipei, Taiwan, Nov. 1998.
• Emmanuel Frécon, Gareth Smith, " WebPath - A three-dimensional Web History ",  IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis '98), part of IEEE Visualization 1998 (Vis98), NC, USA, pp. 3-10, Oct. 1998.
• Emmanuel Frécon, Gareth Smith, " Grouping in Shared Virtual Environments ", Submitted (never accepted) to CVE'98 ,  Manchester, UK.
• Anneli Avatare, Tomas Axling, Lennart E. Fahlén, Emmanuel Frécon, Olof Hagsand, Pär Hansson, Kristian T. Simsarian, Mårten Stenius, Olov Ståhl, Anders Wallberg, Kalle Åkesson, "Experiments with DIVE", Video at the fifth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ECSCW'97 , Lancaster, September 1997.
• Kristian T. Simsarian, Lennart E. Fahlén, Emmanuel Frécon, "Virtually telling robots what to do", Informatique Montpellier 1995, Interface to Real and Virtual worlds.
• Emmanuel Frécon, " Audio and Video Communication in Distributed Virtual Environments ", Master's Thesis, Royal Institute of Technology, NADA, TRITA-NA-E9309, Stockholm, May 1993.
• Emmanuel Frécon, Hans Eriksson, Christer Carlsson, " Audio and Video Communication in Distributed Virtual Environments ", Proceedings of the 5th MultiG Workshop, Stockholm, December 1992.