Media Release
25 August 2003
UniSA’s e-World Laboratory joins SA node of CRC program
UniSA’s Advanced Computing Research Centre (ACRC) will become a
significant part of the newly established South Australian node of the
Distributed Systems Technology Centre Pty Ltd (DSTC) at the Mawson Lakes
campus.
A joint initiative between DSTC, UniSA, DSTO, Motorola and LISAsoft, the
SA node will serve as a research hub for complementary research and
development activities in the area of technology-enabled defence and
health.
DSTC, which is supported by the Cooperative Research Centre for
Enterprise Distributed Systems Technology, was recently successful in
obtaining $3 million in additional Commonwealth funding over three years
for its expansion into South Australia. The SA node includes a
significant focus on the ACRC’s e-World Laboratory project called “Livespace”.
A collaborative project that includes researchers from the ACRC, DSTO
and DSTC, Livespace is a technology enhanced meeting space that includes
- electronic support for information and knowledge management, with items such as the agenda of a meeting, key documents to be tabled at the meeting and coordination of display technology to move information from a display on a participant’s laptop to display on the main screen and back,
- multi-browsing, where participants browsing an interesting website in the meeting room can direct that content to the display of other participants or to the main display,
- augmented reality, technology that lets participants add computer generated information to the display that they see through their normal vision. UniSA is experimenting with various AR technologies to enhance the meeting experience. This includes enabling participants to see virtual objects in the meeting space, and
- automated transcription, technology that enables speeches from the various speakers at a meeting to be converted to text.
Our major advance has been in display management. This can evolve and
extend into technology called ‘workflow management systems’, according
to ACRC’s Director, Associate Professor Jim Warren.
“Workflow management systems include technologies such as a template
that outlines what the process should be for planning a certain type of
meeting, helping organisers to make sure that all of the steps in the
process are included for the meeting to be productive and run
efficiently,” Professor Warren said.
“One of the collaborative projects that we are researching with Motorola
through the CRC is on software inspection support. Companies that
produce high quality software have to make a huge human resource
investment in software inspection to ensure the quality of all of the
programs and software that they are producing. Motorola is producing
software that will be imbedded in network cards, satellites and mobile
phone telecommunications and cannot afford errors.
“We are looking at the application of livespace technology for a more
effective software inspection process. With extensive workflows for
software inspection activities, livespace could help inspectors to
adhere to a workflow for an activity, make sure that they are seeing the
right information to aid the display of that information and potentially
enable the use of augmented reality displays and automated transcription
to maintain good records of what has happened.”
The new IT research facility for South Australia, DSTC Pty Ltd, was
launched on 26 August by Jane Lomax-Smith, the Minister for Science and
Information Economy; Minister for Employment, Training and Further
Education and Minister for Tourism.
Media contact
-
Geraldine Hinter (08) 8302 0963 or 0417 861832