One of Microsoft's leading user interface researchers has left the company
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Hrvoje Benko, one of Microsoft’s leading user interface researchers, is leaving Microsoft Research this week.
This week was my last week @MSFTResearch Bittersweet to say goodbye to long time friends and colleagues! Moving on to new challenges!
— Hrvoje Benko (@hrvojebenko) October 15, 2017
Benko was a senior researcher in the Natural Interaction Research group at Microsoft Research in the field of Human Computer Interaction.
His work focused on:
- augmented and virtual reality
- haptics
- interactive projection mapping,
- new input form factors and devices
- touch and freehand gestural input.
We have featured many of his projects on the site before, including MeetAlive which transforms all the walls in a meeting space into interactive displays, sparse peripheral display, which addresses the small field of view in VR systems, Fovear, a Holodeck-style AR system, IllumiRoom, which expands gaming beyond the screen, Pre-touch sensing, as seen on the cancelled Nokia McLaren and likely many more.
His full opus can be seen on his personal site here, and from that, it should be obvious his absence will be clearly felt.
Microsoft has said they hope to turn more of their research into actual commercial products, and looking at Benko’s work there is certainly a large backlog to work with.
On the other hand, we have recently seen some Microsoft researchers leave the company to make the IllumiRoom idea a real product, and it may be that we will now see more of Benko’s ideas hit the market.
Either way, we wish Hrvoje best of luck in his next venture.
Via WalkingCat
