29 October 2013
PhD students praised for "most useful" innovation
PhD students from the University of Dundee's School of Computing have been praised for a "most useful" fountain that can automatically detect and fill glasses up to 1m away to the brim with water.
The Dundee representatives came second in the "most useful" category at the annual User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) Student Innovation Competition in St Andrews that attracted 27 teams from 13 countries.
Their innovative ambient fountain can detect any glasses in the surrounding area via an inconspicuously placed camera. Once a receptacle is detected, an in-built pump rotates and adjusts its pressure according to the position of the glass then starts filling it with water. The team managed to achieve a high accuracy level, and are now working to improve this further with the use of new motors and better cameras.
The device was designed with the visually impaired in mind, and is also intended to appeal to office workers after a cool gadget for their desks. The team comprised three PhD students - Michael Crabb, Kris Zutis and Sebastian Stein - and were supervised by Dr David Flatla.
Michael said the team were delighted with the recognition their system received and that taking part in the competition had proved to be a great experience.
"Kris, Sebastian, and myself are all from different disciplines within computing," he said. "As such, we spend varying amounts of time working on vision-based systems, physical computing applications and user accessibility. It's amazing to see that you can create systems that draw on everyone's strengths - even if we did need a mop or two for cleaning up afterwards!
"By the time of the competition, the accuracy rate was excellent, and can be improved with new equipment. We aren't thinking of taking this forward commercially ourselves, but we've shown that the technology exists and is viable so there's no reason why you couldn't see similar systems around in the next 4-5 years in next generation smart homes and offices."
The aim of the UIST Student Innovation Competition is to foster new interactions on state-of-the-art hardware. Contestants demonstrated their projects before the jury selected two winners in each of the "most creative" and "most useful" categories, while attendees voted for their two favourite teams in the "people's choice" category.
All teams taking part were tasked with creating a system that used this year's chosen hardware, "The PumpSpark Fountain Development Kit." This contained eight miniature water pumps and a prototype controller that can shoot streams of water up to 1 meter in the air. The system is both fast and precise, allowing for highly interactive Fluidic User Interfaces (FUIs) to be created.
Computer input can be more than just typing on a keyboard, or positioning a pointing device. Touch, gesture and spoken interfaces have all achieved significant commercial success but the output side sees most devices still rely on traditional audio/visual displays. This year's contest was designed to challenge teams to get creative with output.
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