Congratulation to Noam Lederman on upgrade from MPhil to PhD registration on his project Enhancing Creativity with Intelligent Music Interfaces: Stylistic Conviction in Popular Music Drumming.
Innovate UK Grant Success. Haptic Virtual Reality for multi-user, collaborative design at a distance, integrating sighted and visually-impaired users. Alistair Barrow of Generic Robotics (PI), Lisa Bowers (OU PI), Simon Holland and Claudette Davis-Bonnick (University of the Arts) have been awarded a new grant for the MakeActive Project. Technology can routinely provide high-fidelity, real-time, visual, and auditory communication remotely. However, some activities depend implicitly on direct physical touch and feel, e.g. for medicine, teaching, and design. This particularly important for the sight-impaired (SI). The MakeActive Project explores ways to extend existing systems with novel hardware and software that can provide haptic and proprioceptive affordances (making use of the senses of touch and body position respectively) to deepen access and inclusion for all, including sight-impaired users. The project combines prototyping of new hardware and software with user trials with sight-impaired users.
