A multi-disciplinary project which aims to revolutionise the design of technologies for supporting research has been awarded a grant of £1.7million to by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), through the RCUK Digital Economy programme.
The three-year project, which begins in June 2010, is entitled PATINA (Personal Architectonics of Interfaces to Artefacts) and will be led by the University of Bristol in collaboration with the Universities of Brighton, Greenwich, Newcastle, Southampton, and Swansea University.
The project includes involvement from Microsoft Research, Nokia Research and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The consortium will build wearable technologies that can identify objects such as books or historical artefacts and use miniature projectors to enhance those objects with related digital information taken from the web.
These technologies will also provide the means to capture, record, and replay the researcher's activities to support archiving, sharing and publication of this research activity.
Professor Matt Jones, of the Future Interaction Technology Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at Swansea University, said: “We are delighted to be working with such a diverse, high-calibre set of individuals and institutions to help define the future of research and scholarly work.
“At Swansea Univesrity, we have an excellent track record in exploring highly innovative ways for people to interact with their environments through mobile and ubiquitous computers.
“In this project we will be looking at wearable computers that can, for instance, sense hand movements and display content using very small projectors.”
Swansea University Press release, 3rd February 2010
