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2007 ORION Discovery Award Winner
The Eucalyptus Project
CIMS Director Prof. Michael Jemtrud, accepting the ORION Discovery Award on behalf of the Eucalyptus project at the annual ORION Award ceremonies in Toronto, June 4, 2007.
Last October, at the Society of Arts and Technology, in Montreal, members of the research community and other visitors saw and, in effect, strolled along a life-size 3D recreation of both sides of a five-block stretch of Saint-Laurent Boulevard.
The continuous image was projected onto a 360ş screen with a 30-foot diameter. The detail was absolutely perfect, down to the texture of the bricks and paint on the buildings.
The projection was astonishing in itself and even more remarkable because the data was being sent from the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) and the research team behind the ground-breaking Eucalyptus: User Controlled LightPath Enabled Participatory Design Studio, at Ottawa’s Carleton University.
Architecture and industrial design are examples of advanced professions requiring collaboration of a diverse team around powerful visualization and modeling tools.
Carleton University’s Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) partnered with teams from Communications Research Centre (CRC) and National Resource Council (NRC) to develop a project that participated in the burgeoning research and development initiative around the next generation network and the instruments and middleware.
The project has been successful in providing a new and innovative way to manipulate, share and visualize large and heterogeneous data sets, by integrating various technologies such as video-conferencing devices and applications, 3D modeling and animation software such as AutoDesk’s Maya, and visualization tools such as IBM’s DCV - Deep Computing Visualization into a user-friendly “dashboard” that allows collaborators to control these tools and instruments with the support of Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services.
By enabling geographically remote participants to work together on tasks that require high performance manipulation and visualization of massive, disparate, geographically distributed file and data sets, Eucalyptus has the potential to enable faster, more effective, and less expensive engineering system design, development, user training, maintenance and business processes.
“Think of the auto industry," Michael Jemtrud, CIMS's director, said to one reporter. "It has designers here and engineers there, in Detroit, L.A. and Tokyo. It would be huge to be able to connect them with models of this level of sophistication, to help them overcome time delays, travel barriers and make more informed collaborative decisions."
In other words, such high-level collaboration had, till now, been impossible because of the limitations of standard high-speed Internet lines and the lack of a way of integrating all the tools that would enable engineers and others to do substantial, hands-on work together from different sites in real time.
Other uses for CIMS's new technology could include the full-scale reconstruction of shorelines and cities devastated by catastrophic weather and real-time collaboration of multiple engineering teams to design next-generation jets and satellites.
Already showcased at international demonstrations and events in the research and education community, Eucalyptus sets the stage for the next phase of research with further development of the collaborative tools. The team is looking at adapting the technology to enhance of performance environments for music and dance, and bring performers together via technically mediated devices and platforms.
Eucalyptus's primary partners are the National Research Council, the Communications Research Centre, Carleton's Systems Engineering Department and CANARIE, Canada's advanced Internet development organization.
For more information on Eucalyptus, visit their Web site at: www.cims.carleton.ca.
Back to 2007 ORION Award winners page
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