Stage Developing Social VR Experiences

Social VR is about communication between people in a virtual environment. At TNO, we work on making this as photo-realistic as possible. We are actively looking for people to help out, but from a technical and from a user service perspective.

What will be your role?
In the TNO MediaLab, we create innovative media technologies aimed at providing people with new and rich media experiences, which they can enjoy wherever, whenever and with whomever they want. To enable this, we mainly develop video streaming solutions, working from the capture side to the rendering side, looking at many of the aspects involved: coding, transport, synchronization, orchestration, digital rights management, service delivery, etc.. In many cases, we do this work directly for customers such as broadcasters and content distributors.

As part of this, we currently work on what we call Social VR, or VR conferencing. Virtual Reality applications excel in immersing the user into another reality. But past the wow-effect, users may feel the lack of the social interactions that would happen in real life. TNO is exploring ways to bring in the virtual world the experience of sharing moments of life with friends and family. We do this using advanced video-based solutions.

We are actively looking for students to contribute to:

• The technical development of the platform (i.e. prototyping), e.g. working on spatial audio, 3D video, spatial orchestration, shared interaction in AR/VR, etc. Focus would be on analysis of available technology vs requirements for our platform, and then develop and properly test a new building block, or in general on platform improvements and optimizations. Main TNO location here is The Hague, New Babylon.

Focus of assignments is on the technical development of the platform, both back-end and front-end. Technical/computer science students are invited to respond. Also, multi-student assignments are possible, i.e. an overarching assignment where a number of students cooperate. If you are interested, we welcome you to talk to us with your ideas, and we can share our current most concrete topics of interest. The expected duration of these projects is 6-9 months including the writing of thesis and paper(s).

What we expect from you
Top students are invited to apply. We are looking for students with a technical background and programming experience, potentially combined with a strong UX/HCI background. Experience with media technology or virtual reality is a bonus. We expect a pro-active attitude, enthusiasm, curiosity and an eagerness to learn and explore.

Keywords here are: QoE, VR, Web development, Unity, communication, media technology, UI, UX.

Typical expected student background:

• Computer science;
• Computer engineering;
• Telematics;
• Electrical engineering;
• Human Computer Interaction.

What you'll get in return
You want to work on the precursor of your career; a work placement gives you an opportunity to take a good look at your prospective future employer. TNO goes a step further. It’s not just looking that interests us; you and your knowledge are essential to our innovation. That’s why we attach a great deal of value to your personal and professional development. You will, of course, be properly supervised during your work placement and be given the scope for you to get the best out of yourself. Naturally, we provide suitable work placement compensation.

At TNO you have the chance to work with top scientists from within our organization as well as from other international institutes and companies. We have excellent lab facilities where tests can be performed. We also encourage contributing the results to one or more renowned conferences such as IEEE and ACM.

TNO fosters groundbreaking research in a very wide range of domains such as energy, smart cities, optics, space, mobility, and telecommunications. We continuously seek to challenge ourselves with new research questions, from the market and academia, to remain at the forefront of technology breakthrough.

TNO as an employer
TNO is an independent research organisation whose expertise and research make an important contribution to the competitiveness of companies and organisations, to the economy and to the quality of society as a whole. Innovation with purpose is what TNO stands for. With 3000 people we develop knowledge not for its own sake but for practical application. To create new products that make life more pleasant and valuable and help companies innovate. To find creative answers to the questions posed by society. We work for a variety of customers: governments, the SME sector, large companies, service providers and non-governmental organisations. Working together on new knowledge, better products and clear recommendations for policy and processes. In everything we do, impact is the key. Our product and process innovations and recommendations are only worth something if our customers can use them to boost their competitiveness.