R&D Projects - CoolPlaces

These projects focus on the issues involved in providing smart places and location aware infrastructure and information services for students and staff on Monash campuses.

CoolOffice

In the CoolCampus of the future it will be very easy for students, academics and administrative staff to communicate, collaborate and share resources with other individuals and/or groups located anywhere in the CoolCampus. Many spaces such as staff offices, meeting rooms, lecture theatres, tutorial rooms and other learning spaces will have location transparent information services to support collaborative work with other individuals and/or groups. These services will allow individuals and/or groups to view and work on many types of passive and dynamic documents, support conversion of documents to and from paper, and undertake hands free teleconferencing and/or video-conferencing with other individuals and/or groups. It will be easy to use handheld and/or desktop devices to support the information needs of individuals and white board or larger sized devices to support the information needs of groups. It will be very easy for any individual and/or group to actively participate in any seminar, discussion, meeting, lecture or tutorial held on anywhere on the CoolCampus.

This project aims to establish a demonstration Coolcampus office. The office will support computer controlled voice telephony software allowing telephone calls to be made from the contact list held within the computer. External microphone and speakers will support hands free telephone calls from anywhere in the office – at desk or at the meeting table. The office will contain one or more cameras allowing video-conferencing from the desk or the meeting table. The office will contain a Mimio white board allowing white board graphics to be easily converted to web documents and an inbuilt data projector that will project onto the office white board allowing it to act as a touch screen for computer input. The keyboard and mouse will be wireless allowing documents projected onto the white board to be edited from the desk or the meeting table. The office will also contain a multi-function device that will allow paper documents to be scanned for computer input, copied or printed. The office will support the receipt and transmission of faxes from either hard copy or computer stored documents.

Investigators: Prof. Phillip Steele, A/Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky, Mr. Paul Hii, Mr. Husnain Malik

Ubiquitous Library Information Services.

This project aims to develop a demonstrator application using a combination of pervasive technology to locate an item at the Monash Caulfield Campus Library. The demonstrator will enable a client to search for an item in the Library catalogue, with details of the item being displayed and a map showing the location of the item within the library. The demonstrator application will then provide real–time directions within the Caulfield Library to find that particular item.

Investigators: Ms. Jannette Burke, A/Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky, Mr. Simon Cuce

Investigate and Evaluate Commercially Available Sensor Devices for Location Aware Infrastructure

One of the aims of the Monash CoolCampus project is to provide smart places and location aware infrastructure and information services that will empower Monash students and staff as they go about their day to day activities. This will be achieved through the integration of web services, wireless networks, handheld computers, context-aware mobile agents and sensor networks to support and develop pervasive information services.

The aim of this project is to identify, analyse and evaluate commercially available location aware infrastructure that may be deployed as part of the Monash CoolCampus initiative. The investigation is to cover a range of technologies for in-building and outdoor position location including Global Positioning System, Cell-phone triangulation, Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, ultrasonic, infrared and RF badges.

Investigators: A/Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky, Prof. Phillip Steele, Mr. Paul Hii

Monash University Staff Office Locator

Monash University has a web based staff search facility located at URL http://directory.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/staffsearch/staffsearch (See below).

This web based search lists amongst other information, the room and office details of the relevant University staff member.

This project is required to develop a system to extend this service to enable it to function properly over a Pocket PC PDA and to allow the staff member’s office to be located within a campus, building and floor using relevant maps and diagrams. Specifically the system is to support the following functions:

  1. Allow for a user to invoke the web search function via a Pocket PC PDA with a WLAN connection to the Monash University intranet.
  2. Allow the relevant campus map or building floor plan to be displayed highlighting the relevant building within the campus or office within a floor plan. It should be possible to zoom in and out of all maps.

Investigator: Prof. Phillip Steele, A.Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky

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