Projecting Ideas into the Future

Photo by Danny Choo

Congratulations to Professor Matt Jones, who this week was awarded a sandpit grant with our esteemed friends and colleagues at Bristol, Southampton, Brighton, and more! The grant, worth around £1.5M, was awarded for the study of how people may end up augmenting life with multiple mini hand-held projectors; a topic that is gaining increasing energy with the imminent release of the new generation of mobile projector phones.

In the proposal's terms, the project, called Patina, "will develop theory, techniques, prototypes and deployments that re-conceive research spaces as synthesised patterns defined by subtle interfaces that are enacted by our interactions."

The grant, in particular, is focusing on the use of these hand-held (or smaller) projector devices in research environments, to see how they may be used to augment our working spaces to make them more effective.

Its exciting times ahead in this project, and the team is looking forward to beginning the project in June 2010.

Our Imagine Cup Project: Frenigy.com

Our previous news item highlighted the recent progress of our Swansea team in reaching the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2010 UK Final. Despite taking exams, the team is excitedly diving into the next phase of the competition, and have already begun detailed planning.

Their exciting concept, called Frenigy, aims to leverage the popularity of social networks, and influential technology to make people more aware of their energy consumption. What is good energy consumption? and how can you be proud of actively making changes that might help sort out the world's energy problems?

Over the next few months they'll be developing, testing, and trialling their new system and you can track their progress through their project website or through twitter.

Swansea Team reach Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2010 UK Final

After submitting to the Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2010 Software Design competition in December, our Swansea team has made it through to the UK Final. Of all the submissions, only 6 were picked for the final round.

The theme this year is:

Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.

In more detail, the competition is encouraging teams to help reach the UN's Millennium Development Goals, such as ending poverty, creating education for all the world's children, getting rid of HIV, and reaching global energy sustainability. Its a great theme, and it fits in closely with the mission of the FIT Lab here of targeting Grand Challenges.

The creative and exciting team is made up of: Abigail Cauchi, Jonathan Hurlock, Steven Welti, and George Jones. Their team mentor is Max L. Wilson.

Lets change the world!