current research interests

Since March 2023, I have been a postdoctoral researcher at Lancaster University with Prof. Hans Gellersen. My research focuses (again), on multi-sensory XR, this time focusing on AR experiences integrating gaze behaviour and body movements. The work takes place in the context of the GEMINI ERC project at the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University.

From March 2021 to March 2023, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Virtual Worlds and Digital Games Group at Ilmenau University of Technology. Here, I researched multi-sensory XR and focused on touch/haptics. My PhD was about XR's impact, possibilities, and limitations on future in-vehicle user interfaces. My dissertation (summa cum laude) can be found here (review version) and here (published version). Here's a link to the group's homepage.

primary

Augmented Reality. Virtual Reality. User Interfaces. Prototyping. Smart Environments. Computer Graphics. Software Engineering.

secondary

Biomedical Engineering. Medical XR. (Scientific) Visualization. Technology. Trends. Physics. Chemistry. Gadgets. Robots.

papers / articles

The best way to get an overview about my publications is probably Google Scholar.

Aliya Andrich, Florian Weidner, and Wolfgang Broll. 2024. Tick-tock: Revisiting the Influence of Zeitgebers and Cognitive Load on Time Judgments during and after VR Immersion. In Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2024 (MuC '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 360–369. https://doi.org/10.1145/3670653.3670667 pdf

Haopeng Wang, Ludwig Sidenmark, Florian Weidner, Joshua Newn, and Hans Gellersen. 2024. HeadShift: Head Pointing with Dynamic Control-Display Gain. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. Just Accepted (August 2024). https://doi.org/10.1145/3689434 pdf

Florian Weidner, Jakob Hartbrich, Stephanie Arévalo Arboleda, Christian Kunert, Christoph Gerhardt, Christian Schneiderwind, Tatiana Surdu, Chenyao Diao, Wolfgang Broll, Stephan Werner, and Alexander Raake. 2024. Eyes on the Narrative: Exploring the Impact of Visual Realism and Audio Presentation on Gaze Behavior in AR Storytelling. In ETRA ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications, 2024. Glasgow, Scotland, UK. https://doi.org/10.1145/3649902.3653344 pdf

Stephanie Arévalo Arboleda, Christian Kunert, Jakob Hartbrich, Christian Schneiderwind, Chenyao Diao, Christoph Gerhardt, Tatiana Surdu, Florian Weidner, Wolfgang Broll, Stephan Werner, and Alexander Raake. 2024. Beyond Looks: A Study on Agent Movement and Audiovisual Spatial Coherence in Augmented Reality. In 2024 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, 2024. Orlando, FL. doi: 10.1109/VR58804.2024.00071 pdf

Baosheng James Hou, Yasmeen Abdrabou, Florian Weidner, and Hans Gellersen. 2024. Unveiling Variations: A Comparative Study of VR Headsets Regarding Eye Tracking Volume, Gaze Accuracy, and Precision. In 2024 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), 2024. Orlando, FL. doi: 10.1109/VRW62533.2024.00127 pdf

Hock Siang Lee, Florian Weidner, and Hans Gellersen. 2024. Patterns in Motion: On Head- and Non-Head Movers in VR during Viewport Control. In 2024 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), 2024. Orlando, FL. doi: 10.1109/VRW62533.2024.00125 pdf

Hock Siang Lee, Florian Weidner, Ludwig Sidenmark, and Hans Gellersen. 2024. Snap, Pursuit and Gain: Virtual Reality Viewport Control by Gaze. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2024. doi: 10.1145/3613904.3642838 pdf

Veronika Mikhailova, Christoph Gerhardt, Christian Kunert, Tobias Schwandt, Florian Weidner, Wolfgang Broll, and Nicola Döring. 2024. Age and Realism of Avatars in Simulated Augmented Reality: Experimental Evaluation of Anticipated User Experience. In 2024 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, 2024. doi: 10.1109/VR58804.2024.00032 pdf

F. Weidner, T. Schwandt, W. Broll, and L. Chuang, “Perspectives on Mediated Reality for an Enhanced Automation Experience,” in Workshop at CHI’23 - AutomationXP23: Intervening, Teaming, Delegating - Creating Engaging Automation Experiences, 2023.

K. Knutzen, F. Weidner, and W. Broll, “The Role of Social Identity Labels in CVEs on User Behavior,” in 2023 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Mar. 2023, pp. 883–884. doi: 10.1109/VRW58643.2023.00284.

F. Weidner et al., "A Systematic Review on the Visualization of Avatars and Agents in AR & VR displayed using Head-Mounted Displays," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3247072.

F. Weidner, J. E. Maier and W. Broll, "Eating, Smelling, and Seeing: Investigating Multisensory Integration and (In)congruent Stimuli while Eating in VR," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3247099.

C. Gerhardt, F. Weidner, and W. Broll, “SkyCloud: Neural Network-Based Sky and Cloud Segmentation from Natural Images,” in 2023 8th International Conference on Image, Vision and Computing (ICIVC), Dalian, China: IEEE, Jul. 2023, pp. 343–351. 10.1109/ICIVC58118.2023.10270450 pdf

W. Broll, F. Weidner, T. Schwandt, K. Weber, and R. Doerner, “Authoring of VR/AR Applications,” in Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR): Foundations and Methods of Extended Realities (XR), R. Doerner, W. Broll, P. Grimm, and B. Jung, Eds. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022, pp. 371–400. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-79062-2_10.

E. Makled, F. Weidner and W. Broll, "Investigating User Embodiment of Inverse-Kinematic Avatars in Smartphone Augmented Reality," 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Singapore, Singapore, 2022, pp. 666-675, doi: 10.1109/ISMAR55827.2022.00084.

N. Samimi, Gerhardt, F. Weidner, and W. Broll. AR in TV: Design and Evaluation of Mid-Air Gestures for Moderators to Control Augmented Reality Applications in TV. 19th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2021), Leuven, Belgien, 2021. [Online]. (accepted)

C. Gerhardt, F. Weidner, and W. Broll, “OUTSIDE: Multi-Scale Semantic Segmentation of Universal Outdoor Scenes,” presented at the 2021 IEEE 21st International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP), Tampere, Finland, 2021 [Hybrid].

K. Knutzen, F. Weidner and W. Broll, "Exploring Augmented Reality Privacy Icons for Smart Home Devices and their Effect on Users’ Privacy Awareness," 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), 2021, pp. 409-414, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35147-2.

Mostafa Elbehery, Florian Weidner, and Wolfgang Broll. 2020. Haptic Space: The Effect of a Rigid Hand Representation on Presence when Interacting with Passive Haptics Controls in VR. In 19th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2020), November 22–25, 2020, Essen, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3428361.3428388

Weidner, F. and Broll, W. 2020. Stereoscopic 3D dashboards: An investigation of performance, workload, and gaze behavior during take-overs in semi-autonomous driving. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. (Aug. 2020). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-020-01438-8.

Florian Weidner and Wolfgang Broll. 2019. Interact with your car: A User-Elicited Gesture Set To Inform Future In-Car User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia - MUM ’19, 2019, pp. 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3365610.3365625

Carolin Koehler, Florian Weidner, and Wolfgang Broll. 2019. AR Training for Paragliding Pilots: An Investigation of User Experience and Requirements. In 21st Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality (SVR), 2019, pp. 92–101. https://doi.org/10.1109/SVR.2019.00030

Florian Weidner, Bernhard Fielder, Johannes Redlich, and Wolfgang Broll. 2019. Exploring Audiovisual Support Systems for In-Car Multiparty Conferencing. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spatial Audio ICSA. 8 pages.

Kathrin Knutzen, Florian Weidner, and Wolfgang Broll. 2019. Talk to me!: exploring stereoscopic 3D anthropomorphic virtual assistants in automated vehicles. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications: Adjunct Proceedings (AutomotiveUI '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 363-368. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3351503

Florian Weidner and Wolfgang Broll. 2019. Smart S3D TOR: intelligent warnings on large stereoscopic 3D dashboards during take-overs. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays (PerDis '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 5, 7 pages. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3321335.3324937

F. Weidner and W. Broll. "Exploring Large Stereoscopic 3D Dashboards for Future Automotive User Interfaces". In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics AHFE (pp. 502–513), 2019. Orlando, FL: Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93885-1_45

C. Haupt, F. Weidner, and W. Broll. personalDash: First Steps Towards User-controlled Personalization of 3D Dashboards with Mobile Devices. In A. Press (Ed.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications Adjunct - AutomotiveUI ’18, 2018. New York, New York, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3239092.3265952

A. Hoesch, S. Poeschl, F. Weidner, R. Walter, and N. Doering, “The Relationship between Visual Attention and Simulator Sickness : A Driving Simulation Study,”  in Proceedings IEEE Virtual Reality, 2018.

Weidner, F., Vargas, L.A.R. and Broll, W. 2018. Composite Body-Tracking: Device Abstraction Layer with Data Fusion For Virtual Reality Applications. 2018 IEEE 11th Workshop on Software Engineering and Architectures for Real-time Interactive Systems (SEARIS) (Mar. 2018), 1–8.

A. Iskenderova, F. Weidner, and W. Broll, “Drunk Virtual Reality Gaming: Exploring the Influence of Alcohol on Cybersickness,” in Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, 2017, pp. 561–572.https://doi.org/10.1145/3116595.3116618

F. Weidner and W. Broll, “Establishing Design Parameters for Large Stereoscopic 3D Dashboards,” in Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications - AutomotiveUI ’17, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1145/3131726.3131763

C. Koehler, F. Weidner, and W. Broll, "Investigating Customer Perception of Virtual Promotions Using Mixed Reality Smart Glasses" in Virtuelle Und Erweiterte Realität - 14. Workshop Der GI-Fachgruppe VR/AR. 2017

F. Weidner, W. Broll (2017). A Spatial Augmented Reality Driving Simulator for Prototyping 3D in-car User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the Driving Simulation and Virtual Reality Conference and Exhibition (DSC 2017), Stuttgart, Germany, 2017.

Zhang, X., Weidner, F., & Broll, W. (2017). Exploring users views on immersive adult entertainment applications. In 2017 Ninth International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) (pp. 1–3). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/QoMEX.2017.7965642

F. Weidner, A. Hoesch, S. Poeschl, and W. Broll, “Comparing VR and non-VR Driving Simulations : An Experimental User Study,” in Proceedings IEEE Virtual Reality, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2017.7892286

Nico Hoffmann, Florian Weidner, Peter Urban, Tobias Meyer, Christian Schnabel, Yordan Radev, Gabriele Schackert, Uwe Petersohn, Edmund Koch, Stefan Gumhold, Gerald Steiner, and Matthias Kirsch. 2017. Framework for 2D-3D image fusion of infrared thermography with preoperative MRI. Biomedical Engineering / Biomedizinische Technik.

Nico Hoffmann, Florian Weidner, Christian Schnabel, Edmund Koch, Gerald Steiner, Uwe Petersohn, and Matthias Kirsch. 2016. Incorporating MRI structural information into intraoperative functional thermography in neurosurgery. 5. CURAC Annual Conference.

F. Weidner, “Keep people close: (Spatial) Augmented Reality for Improved In-Car User Interfaces,” in Doctoral Colloquium of the International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, 2016.

Hoesch, A., Poeschl, S., Weidner, F., & Doering, N. (2016, June). Effects of Fidelity on Driving Behavior - An Experimental Study. 21th Annual CyperPsychology, CyperTherapy & Social Networking Conference (CyPsy21), Dublin, Ireland.

Weidner, Florian: Entwicklung eines Gehirn-Phantoms zur Perfusions und Brain-Shift Simulation, in: 5. Dresdner Medizintechnik Symposium, Biomedizinische Technik – Von der Grundlagen­forschung zum Transfer, hrsg. v. Andreas Förster, Jens Füssel, Michael Gelinsky, Edmund Koch, Hagen Malberg, Winfried Vonau, Dresden 2014, S. 111-113, ISBN 978-3-95663-018-7 2014

study

Title: Development and Evaluation of an Amira Plug-In for Image Fusion of intraoperative Thermography with MRI in Neurosurgery (1,4; text/en, slides/de)

I implemented a plug-in for the visualization software Amira. The software solution allows medical personnel to fuse a stream of intraoperative thermographic images of the cortex with a preoperative 3D-MR brain image. The plug-in is based on a calibration-based image registration algorithm processing tracking data delivered by a neuronavigation system. For the evaluation of image fusion, a imaging phantom simulating the brain, brain shift, perfusion and trepanation was built.
(Amira, C++, OpenInventor, OpenIGTLink, .NET, Boost, BrainLab VectorVision, Autodesk Inventor)

Title: Implementation and Performance Evaluationof Passive Replication For StreamMine3G (1,3)

During the intense months of my bachelor thesis, I implemented a passive replication mechanism for StreamMine3G. StreamMine3G is a complex event processing engine. My contribution is the mentioned fault-tolerance protocol which handles checkpointing as well as replaying events in case of the failure of one or more parts of the system.
(C++, Google Protocol Buffers, StreamMine3G, cmake, Java, Python, Storm, R, Unix scripting)

Augmented Reality - Interaction and Presentation with Real Objects (german, slides, text, cite)

Event-Based Visualization of Time-Dependent Datasets (german, slides, text)

PlanetLab & Co. - Comparison of Test- and Emulationenviroments for Distributed Systems (german, slides, text)

Social Media and Network Analysis (english, slides, text)

04/2014 - 12/2014 Student Assistant - Klinisches Sensoring und Monitoring, TU Dresden (ThermOnChip)

Development of image processing algorithms for intraoperative 3D-Thermography. Main topics are image fusion, image registration, shape extraction and a final evaluation of the algorithms.
(Amira, C++, OpenInventor, OpenIGTLink, .NET, Boost, BrianLab VectorVision, Autodesk Inventor)

02/2013 - 03/2014 Student Assistant - Professur für Softwaretechnologie, TU Dresden (Vicci)

After I had analyzed existing code, I developed an extension which enables a TurtleBot to play custom sound files. Furthermore, I introduced an extension manager for handling the sound as well as other extensions appropriately.
(Java, ROS)

02/2013 - 03/2014 Student Assistant - Professur für Softwaretechnologie, TU Dresden (DeltaEcore)

I developed an Eclipse plugin based on GEF to load, display and modify meta models. For this, I had to design the graphical representations for the single model elements as well as layout them in an appropriate manner.
(EMF, EMFText, Ecore, GEF, DRaw2D, Java)

03/2012 - 02/2013 Student Assistant - Systems Engineering Group, TU Dresden (StreamMine3G)

Developed a plugin for RapidMiner which visualizes the workload of a StreamMine3G cluster.
(Java, StreamMine3G, C++)

03/2012 - 02/2013 Student Assistant - Systems Engineering Group, TU Dresden (StreamMine3G)

For monitoring performance, uptime and other relevant parameters, I integrated the well-known monitoring plattform OMD/check_mk into StreamMine3G.
(StreamMine3G, OMD/check_mk, Python, Unix scripting and C++)

04/2012 - 07/2012 Student Assistant - Working Group DIL, TU Dresden

For one semester, my job was to supervise/mentor three groups of students and help them with their software project.

09/2003 - 02/2007 Apprenticeship - Mechatronics Technician (Braun GmbH)

For 3.5 years I have done an apprenticeship as a mechatronics technician and completed it successfully. During this time, I gained considerable knowledge in the field of mechanics, electronis and maintenance of industrial machinery. Furthermore, I was lucky to get a broad insight into the organization and structure of a worldwide operating company. Besides that, the work with different people in different departments as well as dealing with superiors in an appropriate way was an important experience. After the apprenticeship I worked at Braun for 2.5 more years. Six months full-time and two years part-time while doing my university-entrance diploma (A levels).

Computer Science and SLUB

I designed a flyer which visualizes the relationship of computer science and the SLUB.
(Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator)

TableLens

Our team developed a prototype of a TableLens for visualizing multivariate data using focus and context as well as zoom and overview techniques.
(HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, JavaScript)

SmartHome

We programmed an application for controlling Smart Homes. The user is able to create rules using the input data of sensors in order to execute actions with registered actuators.
(WAMP, Drools, Java, Android)

The History of SLUB

Our team developed a multitouch visualization software which enables the user to explore the historic development of the SLUB.
(Java, Processing, Surface Tabletop)

Head-Coupled Perspective

We developed an Android application which displays objects in a so-called fish-tank environment. According to head-position and viewing direction of the user, position and orientation of the object is updated. This creates the effect of a head-coupled perspective. In addition to the Android app, we programmed a server application for communication between the head-tracking system and the android device.
(Motive, C++, Android, Multi-Threading, WinSock)

Interaction in virtual environments (Video on YouTube)

The goal of this group project was development of an interaction scheme for virtual environments. With an Android or WindowsPhone app the user is able to explore virtual environments like a museum either in free or semi-automatic mode along a predefined route.
(Unity3D, C#, JavaScript, WindowsPhone, Android)

additional experience

Most used langauges: C# (Unity), C++ (Unreal), Python, R

Experience with:XR development, eye tracking, motion capturing, statistics, user studies, UI/UX development, human-computer interation

professional memberships

  • ACM & SIGCHI
  • IEEE
  • Germany Computer Science Society

languages

German: native language
English: upper intermediate; several years (C1)
Chinese: basic knowledge; one year (A2)
French: basic knowledge; two years (A2)
Russian: basic knowledge; one semester (A1)

volunteering

  • 2016 - 2021 Founder, co-organizer and suppporter of AR/VR Thüringen (now part of Games & XR Mitteldeutschland)
  • 2011 - 2015 LinkPartnerProgramm: Website-Betreuung, Mitglieder Support (Unix scripting, Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS3)
  • 2012 - 2015 Study coordinator for Media Computer Science at TU Dresden