24 April 2007

Student software innovations go on show at Dundee University

PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: Thursday 26 April at 12.45pm at the Queen Mother Building, Dundee University

Software that gets you dancing, and puts a smile on your face, is just one of the latest innovations to be put on display by students at the University of Dundee's School of Computing on Thursday (April 26).

Included in the show by the final year computing students is:-

• Software by Chris Turns that generates (while you wait) a dance pattern in time with music from your own CD, and grades you on your performance as you dance along with the beat. Chris' system loads the music, finds the beat, and generates the dance pattern itself, compared to existing systems which use preset music and rhythms.
• a project by Ellen Moar to extend the famous STANDUP joke generation system to include a joke-making component (users can complete a joke by choosing an appropriate word from a number of choices)
• a 3-D simulation of fish schools by Craig Keiller that is an implementation of artificial-life fish schooling algorithms
• an interactive mouse-tutor for older first-time computer users: Stephen Mudie's project is based on a careful gathering of requirements from actual older users, based on the shortcomings of current systems, and consists of a series of entertaining games to play which teach the user the basics of using a computer mouse. Your guide through the process is a mouse who looks like he's been around!
• A project giving abstract representations of emotions for robot faces. Having robots demonstrate emotions could be useful in number of circumstances and would certainly be entertaining. Representing emotions with an artificial human face has problems of realism and acceptability, so in this project David Stobbie has experimented with representing emotions with various abstract displays on a panel for a robot's face, then gathered the impressions and opinions of users.

Notes

Ellen Moar is from Dundee

Craig Keiller is from Fife

Stephen Mudie is from Carnoustie

David Stobbie is from Perth

Chris Turns is from Carnoustie

Dr Janet Hughes
School of Computing
University of Dundee
tel. +44 1382 345195

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk