Centre for Visual and Immersive Computing (CVIC)

Impact

Through a series of collaboration initiatives funded by the University of Huddersfield, such as the Innovation Voucher and the Collaborative Ventures Fund, VIV has established collaborative relationships with local industries and international research centres. A rapid Spatio-Temporal Volume (STV) based video identification technique developed at VIV has been applied by a local Surveillance Firm (Vetatech Ltd.) to assist with the detection of vandalising behaviours and newly made graffiti in public places. This innovative, effective approach has been recognised  by Global Forensic Science Today.

In April 2012, Xu was invited to the Shaanxi Court Science and Informatics Centre (SCSIC) in the People’s Republic of China and delivered a public lecture about his research into using computer vision techniques for crime detection. There were over 120 attendees at the event including many from the provincial police department and local universities . The speech drew great interest and was followed by an invitation from the ShaanXi Provincial Police department to assist with the definition of the standards and specifications of their second generation highway monitoring and accident recording system, which is currently attended by a VIV group member – Dr Jing Wang. Xu’s work at VIV also facilitated the forming of a European Police Training Network across 6 countries, looking at the latest visualisation technologies for digital forensic evidence presentation. It has so far led to EU FP7 and Royal Society grant applications.

Environment

• Research Group Activities and Membership:  Each staff member is part of one or more research groups, and the groups meet on a regular, scheduled basis to ensure high levels of activity and engagement.
• In-house HPC facilities: A major focus of the PARK group is the development of knowledge-intensive methods (reasoning, planning, optimization) working with big data. To do so, the existing high performance computing infrastructure at Huddersfield will be used, as well as extended facilities at STFC Daresbury. Current research on large-scale defeasible reasoning, as well as complex SPARQL querying over big health data, is already making use of the HPC facilities.
• Use of Central Research Initiatives:there are a range of central  internal funding support mechanisms, established in their present form in 2010, aimed at supporting both PGR students and early career research staff:  the Conference Presentation Fund facilitates the presentation of papers and posters at conferences of national and international standing; the Intellectual Climate Fund supports student-led initiatives by to enhance opportunities for learning and practising research and transferable skills alongside and within a community of researchers; the Research Networking Fund supports full-time and part-time, registered, non-staff, postgraduate researchers in planned visits to centres of research excellence in the United Kingdom or overseas and, in exceptional circumstances, to support travel for data collection. The Public Engagement Fund was established to support the acquisition of formal training in public engagement and to use their communication and research skills in the context of outreach to a variety of audiences in schools and colleges, third sector organisations and the wider community.
• Virtual Environment:There are a range of software services to support research and researchers: ePrints,  a comprehensive research repository, is a one-stop store for research outputs – for example internal personal and research group websites are automatically updated with new publications placed in ePrints. Linked to ePrints and partly funded by Unit-supported JISC projects, is a research information management system (“RIMS”) which supports research managers with information and analysis. We also maintain a Research Intranet, acomprehensive intranet-based information system which is the first port of call for researchers when seeking any information, from official forms, to how to get support when applying for funding.
• Staffing strategy, development and support: The path to a research-intensive department has to be managed carefully. We have a detailed workload allocation model which takes into account research and teaching activities equally, ensuring we can continue to meet our high standards of teaching and research.

Projects

• 2012 - Dr. John Bonner, Development of performance presentations with digital media
• 2011 - 2012, Dr. Zhijie Xu, Co-investigator "VoRS Interactive Visualisation of Business Intelligence". JISC. Funding Value £50k.
• 2008 – 2010, Dr. Duke Gledhill, KTP 7178: Innovative data/image visualisation techniques for improving client experience. Technical benefactor, Leadership Factor Ltd. http://info.ktponline.org.uk/action/details/partnership.aspx?id=7178
• 2004 – 2007, Dr. Zhijie Xu,  JISC/Yorkshire Forward Project, Annoty - Online Annotation Developments. Funding Value £83k. The software is currently being maintained at SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/annoty/), and has been downloaded more than 1300 times since its release in 2006.
• 2002 – 2004, Dr. Zhijie Xu, KTP3509: ELCAT Knowledge Management System. Funding Value £93k. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1464585
• 2005 – 2008, Dr. David Peebles. "Modelling map-based orientation in realistic 3D environments" project funded by Ordnance Survey (Davies and Peebles, 2010).  Funding value £30k.
• 2009 – 2011, Dr. David Peebles. "The effect of graphical format and instruction on the interpretation of three-variable bar and line graphs" project funded by the Higher Education Academy. Funding value £6k.

External Relationships

Dr. John Bonner is currently working with the National Coal Mining Museum on content for performance. He also had publications accepted for the EVA conference last year, CHI workshop in Paris in April and Input Output workshop at Brighton University in July.

Dr. Zhijie Xu has been awarded the honorary and guest professorships in 2 Chinese universities – Xian University of Science and Technology (XUST) and the Xian University of Post and Telecommunications (XUPT) for his contributions in his research area and the effort in initiating international research collaborations.

Dr. Zhije Xu founded a Joint Research Lab with the ShaanXi Forensic Science and Court Technology Centre (SFS&CTC ) in China in 2011 and delivered a public lecture in XUPT in 2012 on “Computer Vision: State-of-the-art, Trend and Applications”.

Dr Peebles, Dr Ramduny-Ellis and Dr. Bonner are currently engaged in a collaborative project with a member of the Data Analysis and Visualisation Group at the University of Konstanz in Germany on a project investigating the cognitive processes underlying the interpretation of visual representations of large data sets. A paper reporting this work has been submitted to the 2013 BCS-HCI conference.

As part of the Higher Education Academy funded research project,  Dr David Peebles and Dr Nadia Ali have developed and are currently evaluating an empirically based online tutorial for the interpretation of data from factorial research experiments.   Dr Peebles is also developing a computational cognitive model that simulates the cognitive and perceptual processes (including eye movements) involved in such interactions (Peebles, 2013).

Dr Pelham Carter is currently engaged in a collaborative project with the members of the Applied School of Social Sciences and the School of Science, Technology and Health at University Campus, Suffolk and the Ipswich NHS TRust in a project investigating and evaluating the use of the VERT (Virtual Environment Radiotherapy Training) system for radiologists.  Dr Carter is also using desktop based Virtual Environments to investigate how spatial information is learnt and acquired, and then later organised and retrieved for navigation.

Research Excellence

In RAE 2008, the departmental research (represented by the UoA23 submission) has scored a profile of (5%,20%,50%,25%,0%) on a scale of (world leading, international excellent, international recognised, national recognised, unclassified), with 6 staff submitted. Since 2008, the department has followed University strategy, transforming its research output over the REF period. The evidence for success can be seen by examining Department statistics in 2008 vs 2013; in all categories we have grown by factors of between 2 and 5: proportion of staff with PhDs (growing from 35% in 2008 to 75% in 2013), funding, PhD students, number of research active staff, number of research fellows.  The research strategy of the VIV group focuses on 4 key tenants:

• Promoting research excellence - carrying out interdisciplinary research, consultancy and course development works in key VIV fields such as intelligent vision systems, real-time graphics, cognitive science and innovative human computer interface design, and Web and mobile application development. High quality papers, projects, PGRs and patents are generated from the relevant activities.
• Making an impact - making a practical impact in the relevant social/technical areas such as healthcare, security, and creative industry to improve our way of life and influencing leading companies in the sector within the UK and overseas.
• Collaborating with others - promoting inter-disciplinary research initiatives across subject/institutional boundaries, and expanding existing academic networks through collaborating with leading experts across the world. New research staff in the group will also benefit from this collaborative atmosphere.
• Sustainability and publicity - encouraging positive media exposure through entering technology “road shows”, PGR competitions, etc. Seeking entrepreneurial and technology transfer opportunities. Attracting funding from the UK Research Councils, EU Framework Programmes, and other international research grant sources.