Meet Santeri Saarinen, HXRC’s Technology Specialist, who is also responsible for the cooperative RDI projects.
My responsibilities are twofold. Firstly, I’m acting as the technology specialist of HXRC, meaning keeping track of all the latest solutions, tech, applications and coding tricks. Secondly, I’m responsible for the RDI projects we are running in cooperation with different research organizations, universities and companies.
My favorite thing about working in HXRC is the great working atmosphere. Being able to work in an exciting environment with talented people all around you, cooperating with different kinds of people from students looking for guidance, to interesting startup teams with the greatest ideas to seasoned professionals both in XR technologies and learning solutions.
My background
I used to work as a researcher in TAUCHI, Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interaction. There, I worked on 360 videos and interactive mobile VR, coining the term iODV (interactive omnidirectional video) to represent VR applications using 360-videos which contain interactive elements. I’ve also created solutions for speech recognition, gesture-based Kinect applications, location based AR, native mobile VR, mobile e-learning applications, web development, AI-based file lifetime visualization, map-based personalized advertisement and smaller excursions to haptics, dynamic soundscapes and chatbots. After TAUCHI I worked as a technical consultant in SmartLab Design Lab in Vantaa, continuing to diversify my skills to more user-based development cycles and public cooperation solutions.
Special skills and background – I’m pretty good at avoiding people in PUBG. On a more serious note, I have experience on a lot of different technological solutions. My main specialties are VR interactions, iODVs (more on that later😀) and mobile applications.
This post is a part of a series. Find all HXRC team introductions here!
Follow us on social media: