Example PhD

Plug 'n' Display

Supervisor: Professor N.J. Avis

Keywords: Self Organising Displays, Auto calibration, COTS, on-demand visualization

The cost reductions associated with the use of commodity hardware, such as projectors and image generators, makes it economically viable to deploy large numbers of graphics channels to create high spatial resolution and large scale tiled displays. However, without automatic means of edge blending, colour matching and performing geometrical image correction using these low specification commodity hardware components, the manual overhead of maintaining several such devices becomes impractical. What is required is for projectors to be coupled with video cameras which are able to sense their environment and orchestrate with their peers to self-organise into a coherent display. The cameras can also be used to sense the users and form the next generation of video conferencing suites.

This research programme will investigate such a system where the devices (combined video camera, projector, image generator, compute) are suspended from a ceiling track where they are free to move. This research will borrow heavily from autonomous vehicle research and physical mobile agents for device navigation, cooperation and orchestration. Such devices enable a self-organising, distributed installation which does not rely on centralised control and management.

The research will necessitate close liaison with a variety of end-users ranging from Earth Scientists through to Medical Physicists and Radiologists, to determine their immediate requirements, issues with current visualization technologies and their feedback on the developed solution. The result of this research will produce a new method of advanced visualization: Plug and disPlay, where additional heterogenous assets may be inserted into the system, enabling incremental investment into an expandable and upgradeable environment.

Key Skills/Background: Open to Computing Graduates and Postgraduates

Contact: Professor N.J. Avis to discuss this research topic.