One of the great challenges of virtual reality is that you can't actually touch stuff - you can't feel it's texture, weight, heat, etc. There are two broad camps trying to address this: the Accuracy camp and the Naturalness camp.

The accuracy camp wants you to experience material properties as accurately as possible, so they build specialist controllers. The naturalness camp wants you to be unencumbered by controllers, so they use illusions. 

I have no allegiance to either camp. That said, most of my work is in naturalness at the moment. 

We are increasingly able to integrate an amazing range of sensors and actuators into fabric, creating Smart Clothing. However, we are not seeing these clothes in stores or in our wardrobes. I believe this is for two key reasons: (1) no killer app - we are not yet doing anything really convincing with these clothes, and (2) tailoring is hard - we are not yet able to make smart clothing work regardless of your body shape or size. I am working on both of these problems. 

If you want to watch me and Paul Strohmeier talk about some of our work, check out this video.  

Much of the excitement around VR's future surrounds its potential for education. It could support better repeatability, lower the costs for 'hands-on' training on expensive machinery, and better support tailored learning. To maximise this potential, though, we need to understand how to design learning environments and what to measure. Crucially, however, I believe we need to better understand how to use our hands in VR, so we can begin to develop accurate motor skills in virtual environments. 

There is a lot of hype about digital twins and a lot of confusion about what the opportunities there really are. In this space, I depart from my usual technology-centric perspective, and argue strongly for a problem-driven (human-centered) approach. Sure, we might have a lot of data about a given process or some infrastructure, but what insights can we derive and what problems do those insights help to solve? Importantly, how do we interact with that twin, in a way that is simple and useful? Sometimes, the solution lies in mixed reality. Equally, sometimes it does not.