BhamXR | Virtual Reality Lab

Beyond the Page: Designing Inclusive AR Storytelling for All Learners

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 15:30:00 +0000

About the speaker: MIXD Reality is an award-winning UK creative tech company pioneering inclusive augmented reality for children’s literacy. Founded by husband-and-wife team Pamela Aculey and Alex Kosminsky, the company blends lived experience, accessibility-led design, and advanced AR to support all children; particularly SEND and neurodivergent learners whose strengths are often overlooked by traditional reading tools.

Inspired by their autistic son Walter, MIXD Reality created Buster Finds His Beat — the UK’s first inclusive AR picture book featuring a mixed-heritage autistic protagonist. The book has received national recognition for its innovation, representation and measurable impact, helping children stay engaged, focused and connected to the joy of reading.

MIXD Reality continues to develop pioneering immersive experiences that reduce barriers, honour diverse ways of learning, and ensure every child can see themselves in a story.

The BhamXR recording was published on YouTube on 16 December 2025.

Links: Eventbrite listing and BhamXR LinkedIn.

About BhamXR: BhamXR brings together more than 100 researchers from across the University to design responsible, human-centred XR and virtual worlds. Our interests spans identity and embodiment, perception and presence, regulation and rights, access and equity, creativity and cognition. Our aim is to shape immersive technologies that enhance learning, well-being, inclusion, and the public good within sustainable, ethical frameworks. BhamXR isn’t just for researchers in Birmingham we welcome collaborators from anywhere in the world. If you’re working on immersive technologies and want to connect, please reach out.

Beyond avatars: Designing bodily interfaces in virtual environments

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Xiang Li, a PhD candidate in the Intelligent Interactive Systems Group at the University of Cambridge, joined BhamXR to discuss Beyond avatars: Designing bodily interfaces in virtual environments.

The session explored how the body can function as a medium for control, coordination and expression in immersive technologies. Topics included gestures, muscle activity, movement and spatial awareness as foundations for interaction across virtual, augmented and mixed reality.

About the speaker

Xiang Li is a fourth-year PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and a Student Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. His research focuses on embodied interaction and body-centric interfaces for spatial computing, with work published across HCI and XR venues.

The BhamXR recording was published on YouTube on 5 December 2025.

Links: Eventbrite listing and BhamXR LinkedIn.

About BhamXR

BhamXR is the University of Birmingham’s interdisciplinary XR network. The VR Lab is part of and actively supports the network through talks, visits, workshops, student activities, technical support and collaborative research.

Grasping the Virtual World

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 11:00:00 +0000

BhamXR featured a recording of Dr Gavin Buckingham’s talk, Grasping the Virtual World.

Dr Gavin Buckingham, from the Department of Public Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Exeter, explored how humans perceive and interact with objects through touch and movement. The talk connected immersive virtual reality research with lab-based perception and action research, remote assessment of upper-limb movements, and sports training.

The public YouTube recording was published on 21 October 2025. The original live event date is not exposed publicly, so this archive entry uses the recording date.

Links: BhamXR LinkedIn.

About BhamXR

BhamXR visit to the Extreme Robotics Lab

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 16:00:00 +0100

The VR Lab joined a BhamXR visit to the Extreme Robotics Lab in the School of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham to connect researchers working across robotics, immersive technology and human-centred interaction.

The visit created space to explore how robotics and XR can inform one another, from sensing and control to teleoperation, embodied interfaces, simulation, movement analysis and future collaborative research.

BhamXR members visited the Extreme Robotics Lab to explore links between robotics and XR.

Watch the robotics demonstration video.

For the VR Lab, visits like this are an important part of BhamXR’s network activity: they help researchers discover shared technical challenges, identify opportunities for collaboration, and connect students and staff with facilities across the University.

Links: BhamXR and Extreme Robotics Lab.

Themes

Robotics and immersive environments
Sensing, tracking and control
Human-robot and human-XR interaction
Demonstrations, lab exchange and collaboration opportunities

About BhamXR

BhamXR is the University of Birmingham’s interdisciplinary XR network. The VR Lab is part of and actively supports the network through seminars, visits, workshops, student activities, technical support and collaborative research.

Motion Capture Crash Course

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Motion Capture Crash Course was a hands-on training course hosted at the University of Birmingham, School of Psychology, VR Lab.

The course introduced participants to motion capture technologies used across research and teaching, including system setup, data acquisition, processing, analysis and practical applications in human-computer interaction and rehabilitation. It also included markerless tracking techniques and broader discussion of how motion capture can support research across the University.

The course was organised by Diar Abdlkarim with support from Mark Elliott, the I-MOVE Network+, the VR Lab and the BhamXR community. Guest contributors included Alan Wing from the Active Touch Lab, Eyal Ofek, Daniele Giunchi, Sang-Hoon Yeo and Dagmar Fraser.

The public LinkedIn post records the course as a completed activity but does not expose the exact course dates. This archive entry uses the public post date so the activity can be represented on the site without overstating the schedule.

Links: LinkedIn post and course listing.

About BhamXR

BhamXR First Meetup

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The first BhamXR Meetup brought the University of Birmingham’s XR community together for discussion, networking and research exchange.

The meetup helped introduce BhamXR as an interdisciplinary community for people working with virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual worlds across the University. Public LinkedIn snippets from the event thank attendees and give special thanks to Dr Daniele Giunchi for his contribution.

The public preview confirms that this was a BhamXR meetup held at the University of Birmingham in May 2025, but it does not expose the exact event day, time or full programme. This archive entry uses May 2025 for placement while keeping the event description to the details visible publicly.

Links: BhamXR LinkedIn and BhamXR YouTube channel.