Cai Shaoyu

Biography

Dr Cai Shaoyu is a lecturer at the Engineering Design and Innovation Centre, College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also the co-director in NUS Immersive Reality Lab. Before joining NUS, he earned his PhD degree in Creative Media from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His research interest mainly focuses on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), particularly in the areas of multimodal and embodied interaction, extended reality (including virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality), wearables, and haptic interface. Dr Cai’s work mainly leverages haptic modeling and rendering techniques to simulate tactile material properties, such as roughness, friction, and temperature, to provide an immersive and realistic interactive experience in virtual and augmented reality.

Dr Cai served as a visiting researcher at the Wearable System Lab at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2022 and the Cyber Interface Lab at the Graduate of Information Science and Technology, University of Tokyo in 2020. In 2019, he worked as a research assistant in the Multimodal and Embodied Interaction Lab at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. He received multiple awards and scholarships, including Best Paper Audience Choice Award in ICAT-EGVE, Bronze Medal in the Inventions Geneva, CityU Research Tuition Scholarship, Special Recognitions for Outstanding Reviews, etc.

Dr Cai possesses a diverse interdisciplinary background, combining expertise in HCI, extended reality, robotics, and electrical engineering. He has published in some renowned journals, such as Nature Electronics, IEEE TVCG, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, etc; and top-tier conferences, such as IEEE VR, IEEE ISMAR, ACM SIGGRAPH (Emerging Technologies & VR Showcase). Additionally, Dr. Cai actively contributes to the academic community as a reviewer and program committee member for leading conferences such as ACM CHI, IEEE VR, IEEE ISMAR, ACM ICMI, and esteemed journals like IEEE TVCG and IEEE ToH.

Research Interests

Dr Cai’s research interests cover various topics on human-computer interaction, including interaction design, multimodal and embodied Interaction, extended reality, and digital fabrication.

He is currently conducting research on:

• Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR)
• Human-robot Interaction (HRI)
• Mobile and Wearable Interaction
• Multimodal interface design
• Digital fabrication and rapid prototyping
• Haptic feedback

Dr Cai is particularly interested in developing novel devices, including hardware, materials, and fabrication. Please feel free to get in touch directly with him through email if you want to do projects/research in these areas.

Awards

• Bronze award in the 48th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva
• First Prize in the 5th China Competition on Virtual Reality (CCVR 2022)
• Best Paper Audience Choice Award in ICAT-EGVE 2020
• CityU Research Tuition Scholarship/Outstanding Academic Performance
• Special Recognitions for Outstanding Reviews for ACM CHI
• Outstanding Reviewers for ACM MobileHCI

Selected Publications

• Huang Y., Jingkun Zhou, Pingchuan Ke, Xu Guo, Chunki Yiu, Kuanming Yao, Cai, S., Dengfeng Li, Lei Li, …, & Yu, X. (2023). Skin-integrated multimodal haptic interface for immersive tactile feedback. In Nature Electronics, 1-12. (IF = 33.2)
• Wang, L., Cai, S.* & Sandor, C., (2023). Perceptual thresholds of visual size discrimination in augmented and virtual reality. Computers & Graphics, 117, pp.105-113. (IF = 2.5)
• Ke, P., Cai, S., Gao, H., & Zhu, K. (2022). Propelwalker: A leg-based wearable system with propeller-based force feedback for walking in fluids in VR. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. vol. 29, no. 12, pp. 5149-5164. (IF = 5.2)
• Cai, S., Zhu, K., Ban, Y., & Narumi, T. (2021). Visual-tactile cross-modal data generation using residue-fusion GAN with feature-matching and perceptual losses. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6(4), 7525-7532. (IF = 5.2)
• Cai, S., Zhao, L., Ban, Y., Narumi, T., Liu, Y., & Zhu, K. (2022). GAN-based image-to-friction generation for tactile simulation of fabric material. Computers & Graphics, 102, 460-473. (IF = 2.5)
• Zhu, K., Perrault, S., Chen, T., Cai, S., & Peiris, R. L. (2019). A sense of ice and fire: Exploring thermal feedback with multiple thermoelectric-cooling elements on a smart ring. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 130, 234-247. (IF = 5.4)
• Wang L., & Cai, S. (2023). Comparing Perceptual Thresholds of Size Perception under Different Distances in Augmented Reality. In 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct). IEEE.
• Cai, S., & Zhu, K. (2022). Multi-modal Transformer-based Tactile Signal Generation for Haptic Texture Simulation of Materials in Virtual and Augmented Reality. In 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct). IEEE.
• Ke, P., Cai, S., Xu, L., & Zhu, K. (2021). Weighted Walking: Propeller-based On-leg Force Simulation of Walking in Fluid Materials in VR. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2021 Emerging Technologies.
• Cai, S., Ban, Y., Narumi, T., & Zhu, K. (2020). FrictGAN: Frictional Signal Generation from Fabric Texture Images using Generative Adversarial Network. In ICAT-EGVE 2020. [Best Paper Audience Choice Award]
• Cai, S., Ke, P., Narumi, T., & Zhu, K. (2020). ThermAirGlove: A pneumatic glove for thermal perception and material identification in virtual reality. In 2020 IEEE conference on virtual reality and 3D user interfaces (VR). IEEE.
• Cai, S., Ke, P., Jiang, S., Narumi, T., & Zhu, K. (2019). Demonstration of ThermAirGlove: A pneumatic glove for material perception in virtual reality through thermal and force feedback. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 Emerging Technologies.
• Zhu, K., Chen, T., Cai, S., Han, F., & Wu, Y. S. (2018). HapTwist: creating interactive haptic proxies in virtual reality using low-cost twistable artefacts. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 Virtual & Augmented Reality.