ITBHUGlobal.org: The Chronicle: Student research Convention-Anveshan 2009 on Dec 15- 16- A Report

Student research Convention-Anveshan 2009 on Dec 15- 16- A Report

Chronicle Editor @ Dec 28, 2008

The initial rounds of Anveshan2009 competition was held on our campus on 15-16 December, 2008. The competition resulted in selecting the entry for “Surface Computing” as the final entry for further zonal competition. Here is the report forwarded by Devender Singh Maun, 2^nd year Ceramic. Email: devender.maun@gmail.com.

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Spirit of inquiry, creativity and innovativeness are some of the natural endowments bestowed upon human beings, which are the keys to transformation of life. These factors, when manifested in the form of research, open new frontiers of knowledge, which is instrumental for all forms of development.

With a view to inculcating research culture in our higher education institutions, the Association of Indian Universities has taken a pioneering initiative to organize student research conventions for the aspiring researchers throughout the country. Anveshan, Student Research Convention enters its second year after its success in its debut endeavour this year. In an effort to gear up scientific research and innovation and their application to the welfare of the society, first phase of Anveshan was organized, which was aimed to select teams from universities to participate at zonal level.

In the first phase, all universities in the country organized a competition/exhibition of research projects at university level in which students from affiliated/constituent colleges, research institutions and university departments participated. Five successful projects (assessed from the competition at university level), one from each of the following group: Agriculture, Basic Sciences, Engineering & Technology, Health Sciences and Allied Subjects, Pharmacy, Nutrition, etc. and Social Sciences, Humanities, Commerce and Law (objective and result oriented projects) were evaluated by a group of venerated judges from different faculties. 52 projects from post graduate, under graduate and research scholar students were selected for the 2^nd round, which was poster and model presentation, based on their abstract. In 1^st round 18 projects were short listed on the basis of their models and posters. 17 teams finally took part in final round in which students gave presentations against a panel of judges. Projects were judged on the basis of Scientific Thoughts and Principles, Creativity, Thoroughness, Skill, Relevance, Cost Effectiveness, Cost Effectiveness and Teamwork.

Students from almost all the faculties took part in large number but students from IT were unassailable. Project by Anshul Agrawal and Ashish Rai on surface computing was peerless and was first overall followed by project of Devender Singh on microspheres was second but was not able to make it through to next round as only one project from each group was to be forwarded. Project on surface computing by fourth year students of Electronics Engineering was much valued and appreciated because of its applications and innovativeness.

The students whose projects will be selected will now compete at zonal level and about 15 projects from each zone will take part in the final stage at national level convention and successful projects will be promoted though proper incentives for career development in research.

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SURFACE COMPUTER-Multi-Touch Technology

(The following report is forwarded by Ashish Kumar Rai, 4^th year Electronics, who is part of the winning team. Email: mr.ashish.rai@gmail.com.)

“Computing is not about computers any more. It’s about living!”

Computers have delved so deep into our lives and workplace that now we don’t use computers but live with it. They command not only our research interests but also our social interaction, games, studies etc. Truly, the computer is emerging as one of our best friend. We now need a much more natural and intuitive way of interacting with them.

A new type user interface is at the horizon and spreading like fire. Earlier computers used to have only command-line interface and when mouse arrived it re-defined the interaction of computer with human. A similar revolution is going to happen again. Mouse has only one pointing arrow and that too you have to correlate between the mouse and the screen. We had to live with it for 30 years - now the time is asking for a change. With the new technology you will be able to touch the screen and it will support multiple fingers at the same time - you can use your fingers, other persons can interact also at the same time. Thus you will be interacting with your intelligent surface now instead of a dumb screen - Welcome to Surface Computing!!

A myriad of different applications for multi-touch interfaces both exist and are being proposed. Among those which exist, the iphone’s use of multi-touch is most widely known. For more diverse usage, companies like Microsoft and IBM are putting in millions of dollars of research every year. In India, however, there is little familiarity with the technology. Fortunately, the field is still in an early stage. The arrival of this technology is imminent and that makes it imperative for us not to be left behind.

We have also started work on Multi-touch technology and have achieved some success in our work.

We started with a small Shadow based multi-touch setup, nicknamed "Mini”. It worked using the visible light, already present in the room. As we placed our hand on the designed multi-touch screen, a shadow was cast in the image captured by the camera placed below. These touch shadows can be termed as blobs. Using image processing, the positions of shadow and their relative motion was detected. This information was used with multi-touch applications, like the one shown.

In the mean time came the opportunity to work with “Google” in form of GSOC (Google Summer Of Code). We proposed to develop a New TUIO Simulator for fast development and debugging of Multi-touch Applications. TUIO is a versatile protocol, designed specifically to meet the requirements of table-top tangible user interfaces. The project was approved and under the guidance from Google and NUI (Natural User Interface) group, the simulator named “QMTSim”, was successfully completed during the summers of 2008.

The designed simulator is a new Qt based fast and full featured simulator for Multi-Touch applications. (http://code.google.com/p/qmtsim/).

We then decided to go one step further and design a complete multi-touch surface (hardware) on our own. The result was a multi-touch desk as shown in the adjacent figure. The setup uses the “FTIR” (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) phenomenon. This setup is based on infra-red light, instead of visible light to remove some of the shortcomings experienced with “Mini”. The setup was tested with a number of applications.

(www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp8SpXfChkY).

The designed setup is low cost as compared to contemporary multi-touch screens, much more durable, can sustain rough handling and can be easily scaled to larger sizes without much increase in cost. The work is still going on to further optimize its performance.

In our next phase of work, we plan to develop a Laser Light Plane based Multi-touch setup and a Low Cost LCD projector. We even plan to develop some user group specific applications’ oriented multi-touch software. Sumit Pandey, Sushant Trivedi, Nishant Singh (all 4^th year Electronics) and Atul Aggarwal (4^th year Computer Science and Engineering) are working to develop multi-touch based CAD and teaching solutions (chemistry to start with). Amit Kumar Verma (4^th year Engineering Physics) is working on developing Low Cost LCD Projector.

As far as horizons for multi-touch are concerned, they are not limited by scope, but by our imagination and time. What we have learned is, “You name a field, whether it is the field of education; medical; architecture and designing; entertainment and games, and you can certainly think of a way to apply Multi-Touch for its improvement”.

We welcome suggestions, criticisms and ideas from everyone and anyone!!

We will also take this opportunity to call on the die-hard coders of our Institute to come and join us in the development of a full suite of applications which we will take to the level of commercialization.

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Anshul Agarwal (agg.anshul@gmail.com)

Ashish Kumar Rai (mr.ashish.rai@gmail.com)

B. Tech. 4^th year

Electronics Engineering

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Additional links:

1) Anveshan 2009 website

http://210.212.145.132/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=202

2) TUIO websites:

http://tuio.lfsaw.de/

http://www.mtg.upf.edu/files/publications/07a830-GW2005-KNUI altenBoverBencinaConstanza.pdf