Entertainment system engineering and design evaluation

Philosophy: Principles of Entertainment

[指針：エンタテイメントシステムの公理]

近年、ビデオゲームなどのエンタテイメントシステムが生み出してきた個々の技術やコンテンツは大変興味深いものです。しかしながら、その根底にある人間の「おもしろさ」を感じる仕組みや、その基盤にあるシステム、コンピュータエンタテイメントと人間との関係に目を向けなければ、エンタテイメントシステムはその対象である人間が「飽きる」という特性をもつ以上、持続性のない消費技術になってしまいます。

神奈川工科大学 情報メディア学科 白井暁彦研究室では、近未来の社会をエンタテイメント技術を通して豊かに変革させることを研究室のグランドゴールと設定し、非言語・体感情報を中心とした基盤技術開発、コンテンツ創出手法探求、人材開発および産業化支援、科学理論としての体系化、市民向けファシリテーションを国際的フィールドにおいて実施しています。

Shirai Lab was exist in KAIT but now it is in virtual. Here are past information below.

KAIT (Kanagawa Institute of Technology) is a private university in Kanagawa prefecture (west of suburbs Tokyo) in Japan. KAIT was founded as a predecessor school, an engineering vocational school, for shipwright engineering by Nakabe Kenkichi. It was chartered as a university in 1975. The present name was adopted in 1988.

KAIT has 11 departments in 4 faculties, graduate school of engineering and with over 5,000 students in total.

Department of information media is one of the biggest department in faculty of information technology. It studies computer graphics, animations, music, online games, and other online representations.

"Shirai Lab" is a laboratory handled by Akihiko SHIRAI, Ph.D, Associate Professor in KAIT department of information media. It studies "Entertainment Systems" in information media. The grand goal of Shirai Lab is attaching innovation of entertainment technologies to the near future society productively.

Advancement of entertainment systems like video games and its particular techniques and content artworks are very interesting in a few decades. However, if we will not look toward to the "Omoshirosa" (amusingness in Japanese:interesting/fun/pleasure) that is underlying human sense mechanism and fundamental system, the relation between human and computer entertainment, most entertainment systems might be consumed for a long time cause of the human weary to a stimulus. So, the entertainment systems can be unsustainable technologies in this future.

The research field of Shirai Lab includes fundamental approach, new media developments, experimental physics and field works like nonverbal body sensory information based fundamental research, exploring of contents creation methods, human development and supporting for industrialization, systematizing as a scientific theories, facilitation for the public comprehension in the international.

Multiplex-hidden imagery system "Scritter", Remote entertainment space Behavior evaluation (ResBe), stable algorithm for Kinect NUI "AccuMotion", audio-massage entertainment system "LovePress"… Shirai Lab's results can be found in YouTube and their website (www.shirai.la).

Multiplex-hidden imagery system had been started from "Scritter" and "ScritterH" from 2010. And "ExPixel" had been awarded by ACM Student Reserch contest (2014) and "Laval Virtual Award" in 2015.