UOW inventions on show at Smart Services launch

4 Jul 2008 | Bernie Goldie

“Immersive Multimedia Services” and “Seamless Integration of Web Content” were showcased by University of Wollongong academics at the launch of the new Smart Services Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) held in Sydney yesterday (3 July).

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, officially launched the Smart Services CRC at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney. The University of Wollongong is a partner organisation in the CRC. Immersive Multimedia Services provides the ability for voice and video communication within a 3D virtual environment.

The Managing Director of UOW’s Telecommunication and Information Technology Research Institute, Professor Farzad Safaei, said it represented a major advance on available conferencing tools and technologies.

“The participants are represented as floating live videos that can move and rotate under their control. Their voices also emanate from the centre of these images and propagate through the environment.

“Consequently, they can use natural human protocols to mingle with the crowd, which significantly enhances the effectiveness of group interaction and collaboration,” Professor Safaei said.

The immersive voice communication technology part of the overall “Immersive Multimedia Services” program was invented by Professor Safaei and Dr Paul Boustead from the University of Wollongong and has been successfully commercialised by the Smart Internet Technology CRC. The immersive video communication technology part of the program was invented by Professor Safaei and implemented by his UOW research team.

Meanwhile, the “Seamless Integration of Web Content” program is exploring ways of creating immersive, seamless experiences between users and their chosen method of interaction with web information, companies and other users. At the launch ceremony, new ways of integrating web content (e.g. video) with interactive 3D visualisations were demonstrated.

The demonstrator works seamlessly in a web browser, requiring no standalone software to be installed and is based on open standards. It shows how events on a webpage can be linked to temporal events within a video. The events and time-points where they occur can be easily customised.

“Being able to improve the relationship between web content (especially user generated content) is important for encouraging users to stay longer on websites and consume more of the content,” according to its inventors Dr Stephen Davis and Dr Christian Ritz (from UOW) and Professor Ian Burnett from RMIT.

Furthermore, they point out that “allowing for the linking of 3D events to time-points in a video will provide new ways of creating seamless and relevant experiences for a user.

It will allow new ways of customising presentation of web content to match e.g. user generated video content,” the inventors say.

About the University of Wollongong

The University of Wollongong provides a real focus on the student experience. They recognise students learn in many ways, from formal teaching settings, from research in libraries and laboratories and also from other students and from the many cultural, recreational and artistic activities that are available to members of the University community. The University’s aim is to nurture quality graduates who are experts in their fields and who can work anywhere in the world. Above all, they are looking to produce tomorrow's leaders, mature well-rounded individuals who will return a contribution to society.

About the Smart Services CRC

Smart Services CRC is a $120m research collaboration between 12 leading industry participants, six leading universities and the Federal Government and NSW and Queensland Governments. The focus of the Smart Services research is in delivering new and improved services for the services economy. The CRC has a particular strength in understanding the service needs of customers, development requirements of ecosystems for service delivery and long-term trends for services of the future. Smart Services will draw on the background of its participants to deliver initial demonstrators in the finance, government and media sectors.

For further information contact Professor Farzad Safaei on (02) 4221 4661 or Dr Christian Ritz on (02) 4221 5224.