Credit for the photo: Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Introduction

A group of researchers led by Francesco Restuccia, a electrical and computer engineering professor at Northeastern University have discovered a method to decrease communication costs of virtual reality processing. The goal of their work is to develop the fundamental research needed to create better computing applications in the future. 

Why are they researching virtual reality?

Francesco Restuccia and his team are researching how to make virtual reality more cost effective and efficient because since this technology is still fairly new, almost every virtual reality headset is extremely expensive. For instance, the cheapest Meta headset would set you back 300 dollars and that is just for the cheapest headset on the market. By finding ways to make virtual reality applications better and more efficient, they can develop the foundation for more realistic computing applications. Additionally, modern headsets require a lot of data to work properly but their work can remove many of the necessary components.

How are they doing this?

The group of researchers at Northeastern have created a new AI technology based on deep neural networks which is executed at a wireless level. This means that the AI can execute the commands much faster than other AI tools and reduce the energy needed to transfer the data from one place to another. 

What impact will their research have?

“The technology we have developed will lay the foundation for better, faster and more realistic edge computing applications, including AR/VR, in the near future,” says Restuccia. “It’s not something that is going to happen today, but you need this foundational research to get there.” The research of the team at Northeastern University will not just affect virtual reality applications. They believe that their work can help create more efficient realistic computer programs. 

By: Aarush Vajha