June 21, 2018

Consortium

University of Cyprus 

The University of Cyprus (UCY) was established in 1989 as the first university in Cyprus, with its main objectives being twofold: the promotion of scholarship and education through teaching and research, and the enhancement of the cultural, social, and economic development of Cyprus. It has 8 Faculties/Schools (Humanities, Medical, Pure and Applied Sciences, Social Sciences and Education, Economics and Management, Engineering, Letters & the Postgraduate School), 22 Departments and 11 Research Units, with 7,000 students and nearly 1,000 employees. UCY currently delivers up to 350 externally funded research projects, including many H2020 projects, and 10 ERC Grants, as well as national and regional research programmes. The University is home to Nobel Laureate Professor Christopher Pissarides and several other distinguished academics.

The Graphics and VR group of UCY has extensive experience in the development of training simulators and serious games, both desktop and immersive, many of them with CH applications. A lot of its recent work has been concentrating on the development of algorithms for analyzing and processing motion captured dance sequences. They have published extensively on the subject over the last few years and created one of the largest motion capture dance database.

Key people: Prof. Yiorgos Chrysanthou, Dr. Andreas Aristidou.

 

Algolysis Ltd

Algolysis Ltd (ALG) is a research, technology and innovation start-up company focusing on tackling real-life problems by devising state-of-the-art algorithmic solutions. Founded in 2014, Algolysis is a recent entrant in Cyprus’ innovation ecosystem and is currently undertaking projects related to real-time distributed systems, data analysis and visualization, mobile & sensor networks. Algolysis’ researchers have been conducting scientific research for over 15 years, in the areas of computer graphics, virtual and augmented, video games, visual perception and visualization, distributed computing, and algorithm design and analysis. They have also coordinated and participated in several National and EU projects prior to forming the company. The company has been recently awarded a research and innovation grant by the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism for its DriveNest storage monitoring crowd-sourced system.

The scientists of the company have the capacity to develop software, web-platforms, and network applications that utilize cutting-edge software technologies and can be deployed across all popular computing (stationary or mobile) computing platforms. In particular, through current and past projects Algolysis’ scientists, have developed specialized and complex web-platforms (e.g., www.drivenest.com), 2D and 3D graphical applications and user interfaces, and network protocols both in single processor simulators as well as real-life network environments. They have also participated in user experiments with cutting-edge technologies like eye tracking devices, head-mounted displays, cameras and motion trackers.

Key people: Dr. Efstathios Stavrakis, Dr. Nicolas Nicolaou.

 

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick (UoW) is globally connected, forward-looking, and entrepreneurial. UoW is ranked as one of the UK’s best universities, consistently at the top of UK league tables. The project will be delivered by the Visualisation Group within WMG. WMG is a department of the University of Warwick with a world leading research and innovation reputation. Its activity over the last 30 years is an acknowledged blueprint for how universities and business can successfully work together. It provides innovation support, new technologies, cutting edge research, and skills deployment to industries and organisations across the world in both the large and small business sectors. The Visualisation Group has a leading track record in multisensory virtual reality and virtual archaeology with strong international academic networks, and access to some highly novel equipment including a unique virtual experience. Comprising 1 Professor, 1 Associate Professor and 14 Research Fellows, the Visualisation Group and its spinout company Sensomatics, have undertaken a range of projects looking at the application of VR/AR imagery to:

  • Cultural heritage
  • Wellbeing
  • Automotive design

UoW has been invited to showcase its research into multisensory VR at the Future Zone section of IBC in September 2017. IBC is the largest media conference and exhibition in Europe attracting over 50,000 participants.

Key people: Prof. Alan Chalmers, Dr. Kurt Debattista.

 

University Rennes 2
The University Rennes 2 (UR2) through the Inria joint MimeTIC team in M2S Laboratory has a long experience in motion analysis and synthesis. MimeTIC is a multidisciplinary team (computer graphics, virtual reality, biomechanics, robotics, and sports sciences), which develops an approach coupling motion analysis and synthesis to 1) improve knowledge about human motion and performance, 2) better simulate natural autonomous virtual humans, and 3) promote Virtual Reality as a mean to explore interaction between humans. MimeTIC is composed of 13 permanent researchers and has unique technological facilities: a 30x20m stadium equipped with 24 Vicon 4-MPixels cameras, 2 120x60cm force plates, a wireless EMG system with 24 channels, and two large immersive rooms (12x4x4m and 9x3x3m). Main recent contributions in relation to the projects consist in:

  • designing a method to correct unreliable skeleton Kinect data in uncontrolled and complex environment. The system has been transferred to a start-up Company Kimea to be used in industry for ergonomic assessment,
  • developing new metrics for motion comparison to differentiate experts and non-experts performance,
  • exploring Virtual Reality to train human performance, ensuring the transfer of motor skills from VR experience to real practice.

Since 2010 MimeTIC has participated in collaborative national and international projects, through 8 ANR projects (3 as leaders), 1 FP7 project, 4 Cifre contracts with private companies, and several contracts with national sports Federations. MimeTIC published papers in most relevant journals and conferences in computer graphics (such as 5 ACM SIGGRAPH papers), virtual reality (6 IEEE VR papers), biomechanics/motion analysis (8 Gait&Posture papers) and sports sciences.

Key people: Prof. Franck Multon, Dr. Richard Kulpa.

 

University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne

The University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (URCA) is a multidisciplinary university which develops innovative, fundamental and applied research. It provides more than 22,000 students with a wide undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate program choice. Always geared towards the future, research at URCA is structured around the 30 recognized research units including one specialized in ICT. Founded in 2006, the ICT research lab (CReSTIC) is an inter-departmental and inter-school laboratory. It has currently more than 100 staff members – 80 lecturers and professors, 10 technicians and administrative staff, and more than 30 PhD students. Research is structured into the computer science department and automatic and signal processing department. The RVM research team (8 EC in section 27, 1 IGR, 3 associate researchers), part of the computer science department, led by Prof. Céline Loscos involved in this project, has developed expertise in visual computing, graphic computing and interaction, to meet the demands for current innovations, in particular around the creative and medical industries, and applications such as heritage, archeology, and geographic information systems. The approach of this team is to rely on the creation and visualization of “rich” content, which coordinates a set of information related to the technology of images and metadata, in order to offer tracks of uses of this content. The research is based on innovative visual technology (multi-view cameras, HDR (High-Dynamic Range), depth and motion sensors, virtual reality technology). The intention is to anticipate the technology of tomorrow and participate in the definition of characteristics through the development of prototypes and the demonstration of the potential increase in the quality of experience. The main themes addressed are of three types: (1) methodology for acquiring creative content rich from reality, (2) content enrichment, coding and interpretation, (3) interactive and / or immersive high-performance visualization.

Key people: Dr. Céline Loscos, Dr. Eric Desjardin.