Projekt INF

The overall goal of this project can be summarized as enabling the collaborative use of the data and the results generated in all projects of the TRR 161 in order to jointly draw conclusions from them. For this scenario, two technology domains have to be addressed: (1) storing the data and delivering it to all researchers and (2) enabling real-time collaborative work between Konstanz and Stuttgart using the data.

We intend to provide a fast, secure and unified infrastructure that can be used by all of the partners. We aim at providing a seamless collaboration infrastructure between the various partners while protecting the privacy of a variety of stakeholders with proper access control. Furthermore, the specific needs of visual computing research need to be addressed, which are large amounts of data, some of which need to be accessed in real-time for creating visualizations, as well as heterogeneous types of data ranging from images and videos to performance measurements and user studies.

The second part of the project is leveraging existing state-of-the-art visualization systems already available in Stuttgart and Konstanz for remote collaboration between the locations. We want to improve information exchange and intensify collaboration between the groups at the two universities by providing the means to work together remotely on high-quality visualization in combination with video conferencing. Visual computing applications involving large quantities of data can specifically benefit from large high-resolution displays. Connecting the 44 Megapixel Powerwall in Stuttgart and the 11 Megapixel Powerwall in Konstanz for integrated remote visualization and telepresence is the primary goal of this second part.

Working in front of a wall-sized display requires other methods of interaction in comparison with using a conventional desktop computer. We also foresee tackling the issue of multiple people being able to move around in front of a large screen, which is quite different from conventional video conference scenario. Therefore, we need to implement interaction techniques that are known to work in such situations and possibly develop new ones that support researchers of the SFB-TRR 161 in investigating their data in a high-resolution video conference.