Haley Adams

Learning in Virtual Environments Lab
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN, USA
email: haley.a.adams@vanderbilt.edu

About

I am a PhD student in Vanderbilt University's Learning in Virtual Environments (LiVE) Lab. In my research, I quantify perceptual differences between virtual, augmented, and real environments to better understand how those differences affect the way people interact with immersive technology.

Coffee and a passion for research keep me moving! But when I slow down, I enjoy hiking and making graphite illustrations.

Through my dissertation work, I hope to improve depth perception in augmented reality (AR) displays by developing and evaluating rendering techniques that reduce the number of depth cue conflicts between real and virtual environments. I find optical see-through (OST) displays--like the Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap 1--especially fascinating!

Research Interests

Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Human-Computer Interaction, Perception

Publications

A woman stands at the edge of three virtual gaps presented by the Microsoft HoloLens. The leftmost gap is 0.25m deep. The center gap is 1.0m deep. And the third gap is 1.5m deep.

Danger from the Deep: A Gap Affordance Study in Augmented Reality
Hansen wu, Haley Adams, Grant Pointon, Jeanine Stefanucci, Sarah Creem-Regehr, and Bobby Bodenheimer
IEEE VR 2019 Workshop on Perceptual and Cognitive Issues in AR (PERCAR)
[ pdf ] [ video ] [ slides ] [ project page ]

Distance Judgments to On- and Off-Ground Objects in Augmented Reality
Carlos Salas, Grant Pointon, Haley Adams, Jeanine Stefanucci, Sarah Creem-Regehr, William B. Thompson, and Bobby Bodenheimer
IEEE Virtual Reality 2019
[ pdf ] [ video ] [ slides ] [ project page ]

Illustration of the CNN architecture used for walking in place activity detection. Our method uses a sequence of IMU data as input for the network, which is trained to recognize walking and standing actions.

Improving Walking in Place Methods with Individualization and DeepNetworks
Sara Hanson, Richard A. Paris, Haley Adams, and Bobby Bodenheimer
IEEE Virtual Reality 2019
[ pdf ] [ video ] [ slides ] [ project page ]

A screenshot of a VR user pointing to an ear structure within a semi-transparent 3d model of the human skull.

Development and Evaluation of an Immersive Virtual Reality System for Medical Imaging of the Ear
Haley Adams, Justin Shinn, William G Morrel, Jack Noble, and Bobby Bodenheimer
SPIE: Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling 2019
[ pdf ] [ video ] [ slides ] [ project page ]

A picture of a person walking on wooden slats while wearing an HTC Vive head-mounted display

Perception of Height in Virtual Reality -- A Study of Climbing Stairs
Noorin Asjad, Haley Adams, Richard Paris, and Bobby Bodenheimer
ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP) 2018
[ pdf ] [ video ] [ project page ]

A young child tosses an HTC Vive controller to an experimenter who is posed to catch it. An inflatible air mattress and tiled foam squares are on the ground to protect the equipment from errant tosses.

Locomotive and Prism Recalibration of Children and Teens in Immersive Virtual Environments.
Haley Adams, Gayathri Narasimham, John Rieser, Sarah Creem-Regehr, Jeanine Stefanucci, and Bobby Bodenheimer
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) 2018
[ pdf ] [ video ] [ slides ] [ project page ]

A birds-eye view of the virtual environment is presented. A roundabout is displayed in which three cars are circulating. Sparse trees and buildings populate the area around the traffic circle

3D Sound Rendering in a Virtual Environment to Evaluate Pedestrian Street Crossing Decisions at a Roundabout.
Haojie Wu, Daniel Ashmead, Haley Adams, and Bobby Bodenheimer
IEEE VR Workshop on Sonic Interactions for Virtual Environments (SIVE) 2018
[ pdf ] [ project page ]

A central scotoma is simulated using a radial opacity and blur field at the center of the screen. The dark opacity is circumscribed by the blur field. The view of two cars in a virtual environment roundabout are obscured.

Using Virtual Reality to Assess the Street Crossing Behavior of Pedestrians with Simulated Macular Degeneration at a Roundabout
Haojie Wu, Daniel Ashmead, Haley Adams, and Bobby Bodenheimer
Frontiers in Virtual Environments 2018
[ pdf ] [ project page ]

Female middle and high school students crowd around a 3D printer, which is supervised by an undergraduate camp counselor.

igniteCS: Addressing Undergraduate CS Retention
Erin Mindell Cannon, Priya Chawla, Katherine Lo, and Haley Adams
ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) 2016
[ pdf ] [ project page ]

Projects

Women in Computing -- ACM-W Student Chapter
I was a founding member and chair of both my undergraduate and graduate university chapters. In 2017, a team of undergraduates and I also founded WiC's first annual emerging technology conference (Emerge). For this event, I enjoyed providing my expertise in virtual reality, handling event logistics, and recruiting guest speakers (2013-2015, 2016-2017).
[ vu women in computing ] [ emerge 2018 ]

Camp Codette
In 2015, Dr. Betsy Williams Sanders and I founded a coding camp for middle and high school girls, which was initially sponsored by a gift from Google Education's igniteCS program. I designed the curriculum and managed a team of undergradate counselors as we instructed sessions for Python, Scratch, and Unity (game engine). Although, I moved away after the camp's second year, Camp Codette is still alive and well (2015-2016)!
[ camp codette ] [ igniteCS ] [ news article ]

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