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4D home entertainment target of New Zealand-ROK research cooperation

Xinhua, February 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

New Zealand and South Korean scientists are developing "four dimensions" (4D) home entertainment as part of a government sponsored research agreement announced on Monday.

The project, involving a multi-disciplinary team from New Zealand and the Republic of Korea (ROK), was exploring how computer graphics and emerging interactive technologies could be combined to create new, immersive home entertainment experiences, said a New Zealand researcher.

"4D is already popular in cinemas in (South) Korea. What we're doing could bring that technology into people's homes," New Zealand team leader Dr Taehyun Rhee, of Victoria University, said in a statement.

The team hoped to have a prototype that allowed people to touch and manipulate what was on the screen in front of them, using virtual reality devices on their hands and heads.

While it was too early to know how much could be achieved, it was possible users could feel texture as well as force.

Researchers from Victoria and Canterbury universities were working on the project with the ROK's Ewha Womans University and Korea University.

The project was one of three to receive 450,000 NZ dollars (331, 467 U.S. dollars) each of bilateral government funding over three years through the New Zealand-Korea Strategic Research Partnership Fund, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) announced.

Another project involved New Zealand's Otago and Massey universities working on new treatments for repairing damaged or diseased cartilage and bone with Seoul National University, Samsung Biomedical Research Institute, and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology.

The third project would see the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute, the universities of Canterbury and Waikato, and two New Zealand government research institutes joining the Korean Polar Research Institute to investigate the impacts of a warming climate on Antarctica.

The fund was jointly administered by MBIE and the National Research Foundation of Korea, said an MBIE statement. Endi