IDM R&D
i.ROCK: Building Local Capacity.
The convergence in IDM technologies requires constant investigation in research that is highly interdisciplinary in nature. This brings special advantages to places that have the capacity to absorb ideas and talent from elsewhere, and recombine them to create new knowledge and opportunities. Understanding that the fundamental nature of IDM was convergence, and hence trans-disciplinary in nature, i.ROCK sought to establish a framework to support successful interdisciplinary efforts which would entail gains from trade across disciplinary specializations. 2 public sector calls for proposals have been made to date, with funding disbursed for some 27 projects to deepen research thinking, and widen the scope of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Today, all our major universities and polytechnics have established cross-discipline centres focused on IDM. Both NTU and NUS have each established significant IDM R&D institutes (the Interactive Digital Media Institute, NUS and Institute of Media Innovation, NTU), which consist of some 20 laboratories involving hundreds of researchers in cross-discipline IDM research, and our polytechnics are also offering more than 36 IDM-related courses involving some 9000 students.
The i.ROCK public call projects are also starting to translate into industry-relevant research with 5 IHL R&D projects resulting in commercial spin-offs or industry use. Projects have also secured a total of some S$1.85 million in grants from organizations such as the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK, and the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).
The institutionalization of IDM and roots of commercially relevant research testifies to the commitment of local institutions towards capacity building, and attests to growing support for IDM as a sector of growth.
IRC@SG: Mission Driven Research to Intercept Technology’s Growth Path
The Internet, a global system of interconnected networks serves billions of users worldwide, and is a fundamental enabler that has reshaped most of traditional communications media. Today, it is the backbone technology convergence and drives the integration of social consumer interaction with real-time happenings through the pervasive reach of Interactive & Digital Media (IDM).
Up until recently however, the advent of IDM technologies has been limited to a sophisticated audiences, driven largely by the wealth of English speaking industrialized countries.
Asia is the world’s largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the Earth’s total surface area (or 29.9% of its land area) and with approximately 4 billion people, hosts 60% of the world’s current human population. The existence of this vast market has however, remain largely untouched by the technical advancements elsewhere, where internet penetration, while growing at more than 550% from 2000 – 2009 has achieved a penetration of no more than 20% into the whole of Asia.
As Internet penetration in the West grows to saturation, strategic investments and forward thinking research is needed to intercept technology’s growth path, and prepare Singapore for the Internet’s next wave of users; “The Next Billion”.
IRC@SG provides funding for local institutions to tap on world renowned talent in collaborations that would advance trans-disciplinary thinking and innovation in cutting edge IDM research.
Under the programme, each IRC is tightly coupled with an internationally recognized research partner; where joint research is carried out on mission specific problems endemic to the needs of the region.
Research synergies cultivated through joint explorations for innovative inventions to meet the needs of Asia’s masses. Through an orchestration of East-West knowledge, talent flow and understanding, IRC@SG has put in place the framework for forward thinking research while ensuring that local capacities keep pace with the breakthroughs and technical advances of world leading efforts in Europe, Asia and the USA.
The IRC@SG initiative has worked powerfully as a construct to help researchers think out of the box for solutions that would address future problems. It has also helped to lay the foundations for breakthrough in next generation technologies that would help researchers leapfrog the innovation timeline and create new windows of opportunity for Singapore in the world.
Research at Centres under IRC@SG can be broken down into 3 key areas:
1. Breakthrough in Multilingual, Multisensory and Presence Communication
The Internet as a medium is often touted as a global medium for communication. However, difference in languages still constitutes a significant barrier to it being true global communication medium. Communication Mediation addresses the core of global communication, where mediation between languages, space and time will enable the widespread proliferation and adoption of IDM among disparate communities. A focus on communication mediation beyond language and text will open numerous opportunities in disruptive communication technologies that will change the fundamentals of communication as we know it. In this area, Singapore has the opportunity to build on our strengths in natural language processing, display and connecting technologies that will enable real-time, realistic communication mediation between the disparate non-English communities of the world. IRCs in this space include:
China – Singapore Institute of Digital Media (CSIDM)
The CSIDM Centre jointly pursued by the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) will tackle communication methods to enable 100m Chinese to communicate with 100m non-Chinese. With explorations in gesture and virtual based communication techniques, the Centre hopes to establish new communication models that would help bridge cultural and language communication gaps between speakers of different languages.
Centre for Ubiquitous Technologies for Embodiment (CUTE)
The continual evolution of technologies touches almost every aspect of our contemporary life, and the development of these modern technologies is closely intertwined with human practices and social innovations. Through collaboration with Keio University, the CUTE Centre draws on Japan’s experience in kitsch to explore new frontiers for feeling communication. CUTE aims to engage millions of children and families with “feeling communication” that will convey the deep feelings, intentions and expressions of cultures. Through experiments in everyday social situations, CUTE’s work touches many areas of lifestyle, including clothing and fashion communication, touch communication, soft interfaces and smell / taste communication.
2. Breakthrough in the Understanding and Search of Real-Time, Dynamic Data
Wireless and mobile communication have undergone a remarkable evolution, where the proliferation of cheap sensors such as video cameras, microphones, their miniaturization and high performance have pushed technologies beyond the threshold of meaningful exploitation. Today, these networks not only have the capacity to connect smart devices like the computer, laptop and mobile phone; but have also enabled a new form of “sensing media”; where location becomes a backdrop, and our senses are progressively engaged into an entanglement of virtual and physical assemblages. With much of technology still struggling with achieving a ‘reasonable management’ of archived data, there is a real and urgent need for innovative means of exploiting this huge resource of live multimedia information; which includes the capability to search and understand data from millions of real-time dynamic information streams. IRCs in this space will develop concepts and capabilities in the capture, indexing and processing of the real-time next generation cyber-physical Web and include:
NUS – Tsinghua Search Centre (NexT)
As infrastructure improves and the cost of mobile and sensory gadgets decreases, the Internet has evolved from a pure text medium to a mixture of media rich and ‘live’ data. Existing solutions are inadequate for this ever growing wealth and quantity of live data and fall short of providing a comprehensive treatment of this information deluge. Researchers from Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore will collaborate under NExT in the area of extreme search – the search for data that is not indexed and searchable by the current Web. Such data includes millions of real-time data streams generated continuously from sensors, mobile devices, data sources such as forums and blogs. Through the research of NExT, consumers will soon be able to extract meaning from this data for event inference and the realization of smarter living.
3. Breakthrough in Tools & Applications
Singapore is an ideal place to hub, test, and launch IDM services into Asia. Itself a microcosm of Asia, the Diaspora of much of Asia’s population is living and working in this country, and our proximity to the Asian market also provides us with unprecedented access to experiment with and reach Asia’s untapped masses. IDM R&D in Singapore therefore should not be aimed solely at unique research, but in the creation of capabilities to made Singapore a “Hub” to test, launch and reach Asia’s markets.
Pushing the boundaries of R&D implementation, 2 such Centres have been pursued to focus on translational R&D that will have a near term impact on communities and companies.
Fraunhofer IDM Centre @ NTU
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer) is Europe’s largest institution for applied research and the the Fraunhofer model is deemed as an interesting model for Singapore given that only 40% of Fraunhofer’s budget comes from government grants which are used to support the preparatory (basic) research. The remaining 60% is derived from a mix of government and industry projects. Such a focus on the application of R&D into industry and social applications has allowed for Fraunhofer to be semi-self reliant, with a good balance of applied basic research and innovative development projects.
There is an urgent need for visualisation tools for exploring and analysing huge masses of experimental and sensor data, simulation models and complex processes. Fraunhofer has unique expertise in this area; and the Fraunhofer IDM Centre @ NTU aims to be the largest and best R&D centre for real-time rendering with a mission to develop IDM based technologies for driving virtual and augmented worlds along the reality-virtual-continuum on multiple platforms, addressing both the end-users’ and developers’ needs.
