David Freeman Workshop

On Thursday the 2nd of December David Freeman visited CUTE center to give his workshop titled “Giving Engaging and Memorable Presentations”.    David Freeman is a Los Angeles based story writer which teaches the “Beyond Structure”  story writing workshop world wide. His workshop is taken by novelists, screenwriters, directors, producers, stars, and key creative an marketing executives for the major Hollywood  companies.  All the students in the lab attended the one day workshop.  In his workshop Mr Freeman provided the audience with a series of drills to engage audiences.

Liquid Interfaces

Liquid Interfaces won the Creative Showcase Golden Award at ACE2010 in Taiwan.  The competition was part of the Advances in Computer Entertainment conference which brings together researchers and practitioners from industry and academia to present and discuss their work in breakthrough areas in computer entertainment. From more than 15 projects Liquid Interfaces was chosen as the first price by the attendees public poll.  The second position was shared by two projects “VirtualPhilharmony: a conducting system focused on a sensation of conducting a real orchestra” and “A Software System for Creating and Developing Mobile Augmented Reality Applications”  The conference attracted a multi-disciplinary group including experts in the arts, sociology, anthropology, psychology, marketing, computer science and design.  Liquid Interfaces Gold Award

IEEE/RSJ 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010)

Conference Report:

IEEE/RSJ 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010)

June 22-24, 2010

Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

Hooman A. Samani

The IEEE/RSJ 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010) was held on October 18-22, 2010 at the Taipei International Conference Center(TICC), Taipei, Taiwan. IROS 2010 was the 23rd year of the conference.

The conference theme was “Intelligent Robotics in the Next Transition” The theme of IROS 2010 was chosen such that the conference would continue reflect the ever increasing interest in interactions, co-works, and co-existence of robots with human, cognitive robotics and other forms of intelligent machines and systems, with the goal for improving the better quality of human life.

Continue reading IEEE/RSJ 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010)

AmbiKraf presented at the Ars Electronica 2010 “repair” festival

The Keio-NUS CUTE Center had the honor of presenting the project “AmbiKraf – Breathing life into textiles” at this year’s Ars Electronica 2010 festival from 2nd to the 11th of September 2010. The theme of this year’s festival was “repair” which focused on innovative solutions towards many of societal issues. This year the festival was dispersed over few key locations in the city with bulk of the installations being at the Tabakfabrik of Linz. Tabakfabrik is an old tobacco factory that was set up in 1850 for the manufacture of cigars and pipes. After its constant growth throughout the years that expanded its workforce to approximately 1000 people, the factory ceased its operations in 2009. The city of Linz recently acquired the Tabakfabrik again is currently being assessed for its future options of use.

We presented “AmbiKraf – Breathing life into textiles” as an installation in the ‘Future Factory’ category. Here we presented an interactive byobu screen. In this installation we had a custom made byobu screen that animated flowers appearing and disappearing in a very subtle manner. With AmbiKraf we showcased how the future technology can ‘repair’ the traditional arts and crafts of textiles by merging those age old traditions with the future technology. The installation was well received for its efforts of bringing back these old traditions in a suitable manner for the contemporary society. In addition, Mili Tharakan, a Research Fellow of the CUTE Center in Singapore delivered a talk based on the theme of AmbiKraf at the “Future Factory Talks” session.

This year’s festival also featured some of the other key works such as “Oribotics” by Matthew Gardiner, the “HONDA ASIMO”, “Telenoid” by Hiroshi Ishiguro – a key figure in the android robotics field, etc.

Website : http://new.aec.at/repair/en/program/future-factory/#post-1708

AmbiKraf receives an honorary mention at the Nokia UbiMedia MindTrek Awards

AmbiKraf received an honorary mentioning at the recently concluded Nokia UbiMedia MindTrek Awards 2010, in Tampere Finland. This competition was held as a part of the MindTrek Conference which is a leading Nordic digital media and business conference, focusing on social media & Web 2.0. The Nokia UbiMedia MindTrek Competition is a competition sponsored by Nokia in search of projects, products or services that seek to broaden our understanding of how ubiquitous media will influence out future.

MindTrek certificate
Nokia UbiMedia MindTrek Certificate

Attracting over 20 entrants from around the world, the jury selected three projects as the finalists with ‘AmbiKraf’ from the Keio-NUS CUTE Center in Singapore and ‘iBall’ from Hasselt University/EDM in Benlgium receiving honorary mentions. The winner of the competition was ‘myGreenspace’ by the eHealth Group RWTH Aachen, Kai Kasugai und Felix Heidrich. The press release on the honorary mention stated “The jurywould like to express their recognition for two distinct projects which did not make the top three, but definitely deserve an honorable mention. The motion-sensitive “iBall”, invented by Hasselt University / EDM in Belgium, enhances traditional ball games with mobile gaming features. The AmbiKraf project from Keio-NUS CUTE Center, National University of Singapore, has invented a technology to render smooth animations on textiles using thermo chromic ink. Both projects extend ubiquitous media into new areas of application in convincing ways.”

Press release: http://www.mindtrek.org/2010/conference/nokia-ubimedia-mindtrek-awards-2010-best-ubimedia-has-been-found