Presentation

VirtUs is the code name for a joint project-team from Inria and the Universities of Rennes 1 and Rennes 2, which is positioned at the interface between digital science and motion science. The proposal integrates the eponymous team of the IRISA UMR and relies on the "Analysis, modelling and simulation of movement" team of the M2S research unit. The VirtUs team main objective is to create and simulate immersive populated virtual spaces where both virtual and real humans coexist, with a sufficient level of realism so that the experience lived virtually and its results can be transposed to reality. Our research first explores techniques to compose shared virtual spaces: animation techniques to move characters in a realistic way, simulations of groups and crowds of characters and authoring tools for virtual scenes. A second part of our activity is dedicated to actually exploiting our immersive simulations to: extend our knowledge on how humans interact with their digital alter egos, acquire data to improve our computational models, and evaluate the level of realism of our simulations. The articulation between the simulation tools we create and their exploitation to further improve the simulations is a strong positioning factor for the team.

VirtUs team is organising SAP 2026

admin 2025/09/19 2025/09/24Conference

After an online experience in 2021, VirtUs team will be hosting the conference ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP) once more, this time in person! The conference will take place at the Inria institute in Rennes, end of August 2026.

VROOM project will be funded by ANR

admin 2025/09/05 2025/09/19News

The VROOM project, funded by the ANR under the PRCE call and coordinated by Julien Pettre, will explore optimisation of crowd management using virtual reality. The project is set to start in January 2026.

META-TOO project – a panel discussion on the topic of inappropriate social interactions in the Metaverse

admin 2025/06/11 2025/09/24Conference

VirtUs participated in the organisation of a panel discussion as part of the second EMRN Conference: “A Metaverse for the Good” in Alicante, Spain. The panel brought together experts from neuroscience, ethics, social sciences, and computer science: Laurynas Adomaitis (RISE Research Institutes of Sweden), Beatrice de Gelder (Maastricht University), Mel Slater (Universitat…

VirtUs at the Human-Centered Technological Innovation event (University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”)

admin 2025/06/09 2025/06/19Seminars

VirtUs team was participating to the workshop: Human-Centered Technological Innovation: A new HUB for future technologies on June 9 at University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. The goal was to promote a human-centered approach to technological innovation, integrating scientific expertise with the needs of the productive world. More information: LinkedIn post

The second edition of A Glossary for Research on Human Crowd Dynamics is now published!

admin 2025/05/26 2025/05/26News

VirtUs is happy to share this updated and expanded resource with the research community working on human crowds. This glossary aims to support interdisciplinary dialogue by clarifying key terms and concepts that are often used differently across fields. With 65 contributors from various disciplines and regions around the world, this…

New paper: “Classification of first recovery steps after quiet standing following external perturbation from different directions” in Journal of Biomechanics

admin 2025/05/15 2025/05/26Scientific articles

A new article published in Journal of Biomechanics by Chatagnon et al. presents a novel classification method for recovery strategies following external perturbations. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021929025001514

Our new paper “Virtual Crowds Rheology: Evaluating the Effect of Character Representation on User Locomotion in Crowds” will be presented at IEEE ISMAR 2024

jpettre 2024/09/19 2024/09/19Conference, Scientific articles

Our team has been a pioneer in exploring the use of virtual reality to collect data on collective behaviour. While the relationship between density and speed is of prime importance in these studies, in this new article we look at the effect of the way in which the crowd is…

Dagstuhl Seminar XR Accessibility

Anne-Helene OLIVIER 2024/09/15 2024/09/15Seminars

VirtUs was present at the Dagstuhl Seminar 24371. An incredible opportunity to be offered time to think without the usual hustle. An inspiring and rewarding week collaborating with international experts, all driven by a shared mission: to exchange knowledge and learn from each other to advance the topic of XR and…

Bobby Bodenheimer is visiting our team

jpettre 2024/09/05 2024/09/06Seminars

It’s a great honor and pleasure to welcome Bobby Bodenheimer to our team. In transit between SAP 2024 in Dublin and the Dagstuhl Seminar in Germany, we’re enjoying Bobby’s inspiring talk on augmented reality interfaces for pedestrian navigation.

New paper at ECCV!

Marc CHRISTIE 2024/09/05 2024/09/05Uncategorized

Our paper “E.T. the Exceptional Trajectories: Text-to-camera-trajectory generation with character awareness” has been accepted at ICCV 2024. With Nicolas Dufour, Xi Wang, Marc Christie, and Vicky Kalogeiton. It will be presented by Robin in Milan. Check the paper here https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.01516 and find more details on the dedicated website https://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/vista/projects/2024_et_courant/