Animated fluid effects based on physical simulation have been a staple part of visual effects industry. They are characterized by offline simulation and rendering that produces high-fidelity dynamics and visuals. As the technology for computer games advances, the opportunity to create such effects in real-time as either a playback technique or dynamic simulation is becoming feasible. The internship will explore the integration of fast methods for fluid dynamics to determine their effectiveness for use in the video game industry.

For many persons with disabilities, for example those living with cognitive or visual impairments, it is often impossible to drive a personal vehicle and to travel independently, whether to school, to therapy, to their work place or to visit their friends. Because of their challenges, they must rely on caregivers or family members for transport, or use disability transport services that are often limited and quite unreliable.

With the growth of the social networks and mobile gaming devices in recent years, the social gaming became an important part of the game industry. These social games provide huge amount of data about the users’ behaviors, an important issue for the gaming companies is to analyze this data and model the choices and behavior of the users and based on this model they try to improve their product and predict the behaviors of their users. The expected benefit to the partner organization is the research and adaption of new techniques for modeling user behaviour for social gaming.

Video Games require a vast array of different computations to present the desired experience. These computations must be completed consistently to make the software responsive to the user. The industry trend towards many separate processors (multi-core) in the same physical device and the emergence of network based 'cloud' computing have created many opportunities, but also many challenges for the game industry.

The Centre for Global eHealth Innovation (UHN) is leading the development of a mobile web application for asthma self-management on behalf of Ontario Lung Association, in a project funded by Canada Health Infoway. The internship will involve the research and development of the user-interface of this novel application, which can be accessed by users via standard browsers on desktops and laptops to across a range of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Modeling and simulation of realistic motion is one of the important topics in mechanical engineering and related areas. Such simulations become much more challenging when rigid body dynamics with frictional contacts appears. The total number of contact points is very important and is a key element to determine the difficulty level of the simulation, meaning that if the number of contact points increases, the simulation becomes too difficult or even impossible. In this project, we would like to develop algorithms by which we can do the simulation for large number of contact points.

Virtual environments represented by multibody system models play an important role in many applications. Adding the possibility of the user directly interacting with such environments via physical touch using haptics can significantly enhance the usability and range of application of simulated environments.

Despite enormous advances in technology, digital interfaces continue to rely on text and image based communication, demonstrating a lack of support for full-body sensory engagement, and downplaying the body’s role in communication and experience. This dependence on visual modes of input and output relies heavily on an individual’s attention, presenting problems for people performing tasks such as walking or driving. There is currently much work being done on gestural movement interaction as an alternative input method with most research addressing functional or task-oriented movement.

We will create new software technology for generating intelligent-looking movement behavior of virtual characters in video games. When characters move around in some game worlds, they typically plan their path around fixed obstacles and use some simple rules to avoid dynamic obstacles, such as other characters. Recently a family of methods based on the concept of Velocity Obstacles (VO) has been developed at the University of North Carolina. These algorithms have been shown to produce collision free navigation in theory and in practice.