Researchers develop new driving simulator Portobello that combines virtual and mixed reality

According to foreign media reports, researchers at Cornell Tech have developed a new driving simulator, Portobello, that combines virtual reality and mixed reality, allowing drivers and passengers to see virtual objects superimposed on the real world.

Image source: ACM SIGCHI

The technology opens up new possibilities for researchers to conduct the same user studies in the lab and on the road — a new concept the team calls “platform portability.”

The research team, led by Wendy Ju, an associate professor at Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, published a paper titled "Portobello: Extended Driving Simulation from the Lab to the Road" at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in May, where the paper received an honorable mention.

Co-authors of the paper include doctoral students Fanjun Bu, Stacey Li, David Goedicke and Mark Colley, and Gyanendra Sharma, an industrial consultant from Woven by Toyota.