Research

Virtual Worlds Research: NuiLib & Armadilo

Exciting update on two pieces of software from the Open Virtual Worlds research group.

The first is NuiLib
(available at NuiLib.org), a utility library for facilitating
development with NUI (Natural User Input) devices (such as the Microsoft
Kinect).

It puts an abstraction layer over the top of the NUI device to
hide the gory details of the original API and allows the developer to
focus on what they are trying to use the device for. It aims to ease
cross platform support, support for different devices, development and
experimentation with new NUI input parsing algorithms, integration of
new algirithms and code clarity.

The second is Armadillo.

This is a Virtual World client modified to support Kinect input. Users
can perform gestures to move their avatar through the world without having to interact with the computer itself. Helpful in museum or school installation
projects.

A video of Armadillo in action is available on the Open Virtual Worlds’ facebook timeline.
Kinect integration in Armadillo was achieved solely using NuiLib.

NuiLib has been featured on Microsoft’s Channel9 Coding for Fun blog
and by the DevelopKinect
community.

Talks are underway to include Armadillo in an
educational pilot program across 38 schools in Ireland and as part of a
Virtual World performance art project.

Both projects were developed by John McCaffery. You can find him in Room 0.09 (Jack Cole Building).

If you are starting on a Kinect project and want
to look at NuiLib or would like to superman your way through the Open
Virtual Worlds group’s reconstruction
of St Andrews Cathedral send him an email or pop in for a chat.

Data Journalism Award

Alex Voss and researchers from Manchester, Leicester and the Guardian Newspaper were awarded first place in the Data Visualisation and Storytelling category at the Global Editors Networks World News summit in Paris yesterday. Riot Rumours featured in the Reading the Riots study published by the Guardian newspaper last December. More information in the University News and our previous blog post. Congratulations to all concerned.

Brazilian “Science without Borders” studentships

The Brazilian Government has decided to support a programme of scholarships to promote the consolidation and expansion of science, technology and innovation in Brazil through ‘Science without Borders’. Science and technology scholarships will be made available to support tuition fees, travel and living costs.

Background information and programme details can be located at Brazil Science Without Borders and includes a list of project areas relating to Computer Science.

Honourable mentions for two ACM research papers

Per Ola Kristensson has two recent papers published in top ACM conferences that have received honourable mentions:

Best student poster award at IWSOS

Congratulations to Lei Fang, one of our SICSA postgrads, on winning the best student poster award at the recent International Workshop on Self-Organising Systems (IWSOS) in Delft NL.

The poster (PDF), entitled “Towards self-management in WSNs by exploiting a spatio-temporal model”, presents early work on using statistical methods to find and exploit correlations between the observations made by nodes in a wireless sensor network. The aim is to use these correlations to detect errors, improve calibration and reduce data traffic.