Lana Glisic will present her MSE thesis "LiDAR for Children's Coding and Creativity in Augmented Reality" on Friday, April 24th, 2026 in Green Hall 3-S-14 at 11:00am. Advisor: Andrés Monroy-Hernández Reader: Parastoo Abtahi All are welcome to attend. Abstract: Abstract: Children often encounter Augmented Reality (AR) through social media and video games, where engagement is largely limited to consumption rather than creation. An AR authoring environment is presented that enables the construction of interactive experiences by programming a virtual character to navigate and climb obstacles within the physical environment. The system leverages LiDAR-based depth sensing to reconstruct surrounding geometry and provides a block-based programming interface to define character behaviors and interactions. By combining spatial sensing with visual programming, expanded opportunities for coding, creativity, and the development of spatial reasoning are supported. A user study involving 6 children aged 5-11 in the United States was conducted to evaluate the usability and engagement of the LiDAR-driven features. Participants successfully created interactive AR narratives featuring virtual characters that traversed and climbed real-world structures in three-dimensional space. The implementation and potential applications of the system in educational contexts are examined. Findings indicate that the approach promotes learning through creative exploration while also revealing challenges related to the accuracy and robustness of real-time scene reconstruction and geometric traversal.