Creative Technology Research Projects

Animation has the potential for job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property according to the UK Creative Industries Task Force. However, traditional animation is a labor intensive and time consuming process. Animators have to spend hours at the drawing board tracing, sketching, and coloring each frame. This process can easily take more than 60% of the entire production time.

The labor intensive nature of the work has resulted in much of the outsource market shifting to developing countries where wages and living standard are low. The proposal will bring to the existing palette of animation technology an innovative framework that cuts time and cost of production significantly, allowing more time and effort for creative development. We are collaborating in this project with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Waseda University in Japan.

Healthcare is an important marketplace for emerging technologies, and the virtual reality (VR) technology has revolutionized the global healthcare industry. Since 2000 the VR applications in surgery, medical education & training have experienced double-digit growth worldwide. Still however exist some technical obstacles, of which the realistic modeling of tissue objects that are fully responsive to surgical manipulations is the most challenging.

Our aim is to investigate novel approaches on modeling and visualization of vascular network of human being in creating a realistic surgical environment for medical training. Start from modeling the vessels of liver and cerebral vascular, we gradually extend to other tissues. In a long run our aspiration is to integrate and complement our ideas to bid big research grants to develop a high-fidelity VR simulation system in clinical training to honing medical practitioner's skills and improve patient safety, making quality-of-life for all. We are collaborating in this project Beijing Normal University in China, with a grant supported from Royal Society.

Being built on a previous research model for teaching called VITAE, this project, called Game-iT, extends VITAE by deploying learning methods based on Kolb's learning circle and ICT. New Web 2.0 tools in particular will be employed in order to enable game-based learning. Teaching materials for the pilot test runs and subsequent courses will be developed in order to demonstrate the benefits of using game-based learning.

We aim this research to enable higher education institutions to integrate creative technologies into their other ICT platforms such as student portals and virtual learning environments. After the project there will be an electronic learning platform in the partner countries through which parts of the courses will be delivered. This will also contain support mechanisms for academics, including a hotline, FAQs and learning resource database. This project is supported by the EU Leonardo Transfer of Innovation Fund, with collaboration with other EU partners.

This project is to provide some non-verbal cues that are present in face-to-face conversations that are not available within Internet Communication without using audio or video. We will build a prototype that analyses text that is input by users, and extract the emotion and display an appropriate expressive image. During the development we are going to investigate methods of modelling emotion to to resolve ambiguity or conflicting emotional content that occur within individual sentences.

Technology has had an enormous effect on the way we live our lives and the speed at which we can communicate and do things. Yet rather than use the extra time we gain to relax and contemplate life we seem to fill the time with more activity. The RSM project uses live snails inhabiting a tank on the BU campus to carry electronic messages. The snails are fitted with tiny capsules that hold radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips.

As the snails pass within range of an electronic ‘leader’ positioned within the tank, the emails will ‘attach’ themselves to the chips. The emails will only be sent to their final destinations once the snails pass close to a second reader which will then forward the messages. This project is one of our collaborations with Media School in Bournemouth University. It is presented as part of the ‘Slow Art’ category at SIGGRAPH 2008.