Arata Jingu | 神宮 亜良太

AI engineer at Sakana AI, working on Defense Tech x AI.

PhD in computer science at Saarland University. Research intern at Google on AR/AI in summer 2025. My work has been published/exhibited at top-tier venues (e.g., ACM CHI/UIST, Laval Virtual) and featured on mainstream media (e.g., Yahoo Finance, Business Today, Engadget). Recipient of Google PhD Fellowship, Funai Overseas Scholarship.

For researchers: I am not accepting new peer-review invitations at this time.

CV | LinkedIn | GitHub | X | Email: jingu@cs.uni-saarland.de

Main Publications

Scene2Hap: Generating Scene-Wide Haptics for VR from Scene Context with Multimodal LLMs

Arata Jingu*, Easa AliAbbasi*, Sara Safaee, Paul Strohmeier, Jürgen Steimle (*equal contribution)
In Proc. CHI'26 (full paper)

LLM-centered system to automatically design vibrotactile feedback for entire VR scenes based on the objects’ semantic attributes and physical contexts.

Paper

HapticPipette: Seamless Capture of Object Compliance in Mixed Reality

Arata Jingu, Jianhui Yan, Maja Fehlberg, Roland Bennewitz, Jürgen Steimle
In Proc. AHs'26 (full paper)

Technique for seamlessly capturing the complex force-displacement characteristics of physical objects in real-time MR.

Paper

Shaping Compliance: Inducing Haptic Illusion of Compliance in Different Shapes with Electrotactile Grains

Arata Jingu, Nihar Sabnis, Paul Strohmeier, Jürgen Steimle
In Proc. CHI'24 (full paper)

Rendering softness in different shapes with a thin haptic device.

Paper | Video

Double-Sided Tactile Interactions for Grasping in Virtual Reality

Arata Jingu, Anusha Withana, Jürgen Steimle
In Proc. UIST'23 (full paper)
Best Demo Honorable Mention (People’s Choice, top 7%)

Haptic interaction paradigm for pinching fingers.

Paper | Video

Awards

• 2023.11 Best Demo Honorable Mention Award, ACM UIST'23
• 2022.03 2nd Best Dean's Award, Master's Thesis at the University of Tokyo
• 2019.11 Unity Award, 27th International Virtual Reailty Contest (IVRC)
• 2019.11 Laval Virtual Award, 27th International Virtual Reailty Contest (IVRC)

Funding

• 2024.10 Google PhD Fellowship: 2-year funding
• 2023.06 ERC Proof of Concept Grant: 1-year funding
• 2022.10 SIGCHI Gary Marsden Travel Award: $3.2K
• 2022.05 Funai Overseas Scholarship: 2-year funding
• 2018.03 Mercari BOLD Scholarship for SXSW 2018

Exhibitions

Be in"tree"sted in | きになるき

International Virtual Reality Contest 2019, Tokyo (Laval Virtual Award, Unity Award)
Laval Virtual 2020, Virtual

VR experience of becoming a tree and spending the four seasons.
(w/ three co-creators, my part: VR/Server)

Paper | Video

Autonomous Shadow | 自律する影

IIIExhibition 2018 "Dest-logy REBUILD", Tokyo

Your shadow moves autonomously.
(w/ two co-creators, my part: Python/OpenCV/Shadow Image Processing/OSC)

Video

Leaplat

The 69th Komaba festival (2018), Tokyo

Splatoon-like AR battle game.
(Unity/Design)

Video