The Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI) invites highly-motivated students to apply to be Research Assistants during the 2019 Summer.
The Summer internship program is open to all undergraduated students, independently of their degree and university. It offers a research opportunity for students to engage in scholarly research with accomplished scholars and peers and an ample opportunity for interaction among students and faculty.
Students are advised to read them carefully and in case of doubts contact the responsible supervisor and ask more information about the work, responsibilities, methods or any other questions. Afterwords, you should send your application (updated CV + motivation letter) by email to bolsas.projetos@arditi.pt with the reference ARDITI-LARSYS-2019-003 .
Note: You can apply for any number of calls without any restriction.
Supervisor: Dr. Filipe Quintal
Contact: filipe.quintal@m-iti.org
As the eco-feedback research grows it is becoming clearer that although appliances are getting more efficient, we now have more appliances than ever. Authors have explored this issue with different approaches to make electricity consumption more visible and tangible to consumers. In this internship, it is proposed for the selected student to evaluate a interaction techniques to visualize and interact with eco-feedback devices using Augmented Reality devices/software. Students will first evaluate from 2 different hardware solution (aryzon and holokit), later he/she will study and select an interaction/visualization technique for consumption data.
Finally, it is expected for the student to deliver a working prototype with the selected hardware and implemented software.
Note: You will be asked to contribute 20 to 25 hours per week to this project and maintain weekly meetings with your supervisor. This is a three-month internship, to commence in mid-June.
Supervisor: Prof. Sergi Bermúdez i Badia
Contact: sergi.bermudez@m-iti.org
The Reh@Panel tool was developed in 2013 and allowed for the deployment of several serious games and research tools, used for rehabilitation and exergames (see https://neurorehabilitation.m-iti.org/tools/en/). This tool gathers the data from several tracking technologies, as body position and movement from Kinect, or brainwaves from Emotiv EPOC. It then converts this information into a common UDP communication protocol and streams it. The client applications, such as Serious Games, can then use this information for interaction or data collection.
Since the development of this tool, numerous advancements have been made with the technologies involved, namely the Unity3D game engine, used to develop this tool. One point of potential improvement is that the current tool was not developed modularly. This has two major implications: first, since every supported technology is loaded with the tool, the tool is overloaded with unneeded functionality for most users; second, the lack of modularity makes it necessary to edit the core of the tool, which makes it difficult to edit and maintain, implies a lot of work, and with the risk of breaking the tool since not all functionalities can be systematically tested at every modification. Another improvement sought is to allow the core application to translate from and to the VRPN protocol, which is currently the standard communication protocol for virtual reality peripherals in VR applications (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRPN).
Here we propose to update this tool, to make it a lightweight middleware and to break it down into simple modules, that can be added and maintained separately from the main application. The motivation for this proposal is to make this tool more attractive for developers and to bring it closer to the expected performance levels of professional applications of the genre.
Since the tool has to be backwards compatible, the resulting tool can be immediately tested with all existing applications, with improved performance than the current tool. The hosting group will provide the SW and HW, as well as guidance and technical support.
Note: Students will work 20-25 hours/week in the NeuroRehabLab (https://neurorehabilitation.m-iti.org) of ITI.
Supervisor: Dr. Augusto Esteves
Contact: augusto.esteves@m-iti.org
The recent popularity of augmented-reality (AR) has led to an increase in the availability of low- cost (<$35) head-mounted displays (HMDs) such as the HoloKit1, ZapBox2, or Aryzon3. But while these devices do a great job of anchoring digital information onto the real world, and potentially contributing to the mainstream adoption of AR, there is still a lack of consensus on how users should interact with these devices and their applications. This is particularly true in mobile contexts such as when the user is a tourist or a visitor in a museum; two popular applications for AR.
In this internship, and with the help of your supervisor, you will be implementing a variety of already existing input techniques for HMDs (e.g., ManoMotion4). You will then study the effect of these techniques in users’ preference, performance, perceived exertion, and social acceptability, in a variety of contexts: standing and walking; 2D and 3D scenes.
Note: You will be asked to contribute 20 to 25 hours per week to this project and maintain weekly meetings with your supervisor. This is a three-month internship, to commence in mid-June.
Supervisor: Dr. Simone Ashby
Lead Research Assistant: Kristen Scott
Contacts: simone.ashby@m-iti.org | kristen.scott@m-iti.org
From interactions with virtual assistants (e.g. Amazon Alexa, iOS Siri), to audio enabled websites and screen readers, synthetic speech (aka text-to-speech, or TTS) is steadily becoming a facet of our everyday experience with technology. Currently, the better performing TTS technologies are limited to the world’s dominant languages. Available TTS voices tend to have accents that are considered ‘neutral’ or ‘standard’ for the given language, while less resourced languages and accents remain underrepresented. Free, open source speech synthesis technologies exist, which theoretically allow more people / discrete communities to develop their own representative TTS voices. However, it remains to be determined how people will react to hearing content read by such voices and whether the quality of TTS voices created by open source methods is sufficient for them to supplant the commercial TTS voices people tend to be familiar with.
For this project, we seek a highly motivated student intern to help conduct a TTS evaluation study that addresses these questions. Specific tasks include: assisting with recording sessions; performing TTS voice quality assurance checks; and assisting in experiment design and implementation, including participant recruitment; and data analysis.
Note: This project is suitable for undergraduate students. Students are expected to work 20-25 hours per week at ITI.
Supervisor: Dr. Mónica Mendes
Contact: monica.mendes@m-iti.org
The ARTiVIS DIY Video Streaming Kit (http://diy.artivis.net) is a low-cost, flexible toolkit for developing custom video streaming solutions for research, digital art and activism regarding environmental sustainability. The kit is comprised of a set of low-cost commonly available Open Hardware parts packaged with custom Open Source Software. From its inception, it is being iteratively developed to overcome issues gleaned from practical experience with commercial IP Cameras, and has been successfully used in interactive installations and community workshops.
Although all of the kit’s materials are easy to obtain, it still takes a fair deal of technical expertise to build, configure and customise for particular applications. The goal for this internship project is to improve the overall user experience of the kit for prospective users and project collaborators.
Note: This project is suitable for undergraduate students. The participating student will be asked to contribute 20 hours per week (@ ITI/FBAUL) to this project and maintain regular face-to-face and email communication with the Principal Investigator/Supervisor and project team, including weekly meetings/scrums. This is a three-month internship, to commence in early July.
Supervisor: Dr. Bongkeum Susana Jeong
Contact: bongkeum.jeong@m-iti.org
We explore a mHealth approach where the relative strengths of both physical and digital artifacts are combined into an object aimed to record and convey child health records. We face the design challenges and opportunities associated with the combination of human- readable data and machine-readable data as two different levels of complexity of information. Specifically, we are designing a solution that combines both a physical object with a physical representation of an aesthetic symbol and digital medical data with vaccination information that is stored in a device contained into the object.
Memento-Key is a project aiming to make it easier to create and remember secure passwords that exist only in your head. The goal is to provide a service which can generate a split public/private password where the public part acts as a reminder to the private part. The password must be easily memorable (when using the public key to help) but must also be a strong password. It must be possible to easily show the public part on demand. The public part is based on just the website and the user name. It must not be possible to recover the private part by any means, that part must never be stored, or even communicated with the server.
Note: The participating student will be asked to maintain regular face-to-face and email communication with the Principal Investigator/Supervisor, including weekly meetings/scrums. This is a three-month internship, to commence in mid June. This project is suitable for undergraduate students. Students are expected to work 20-25 hours per week at ITI.
Supervisor: Dr. Valentina Nisi
Contact: valentina.nisi@m-iti.org
The rapidly changing nature of today’s metropolitan landscapes means that we can begin to lose track of what makes them unique. It is important to acknowledge that cities need to develop in order to grow and evolve, but it is also essential to consider the features that contribute to their identity, and how these can be discussed as transformation occurs. Unfortunately, urban character is a difficult term to communicate because it can mean different things for different people. There is currently no platform for citizens, designers and local authorities to capture this information visually and discuss it democratically.
Streetset responds to these challenges by inviting users to collect photographic typologies of unique urban characteristics in their local area. Users can upload a set of images around a theme that they have noticed occurring within the built landscape of a specific part of the city and outline why this visual concern is significant. Likewise, local authorities and architects can use Streetset to search for photographic typologies that users have uploaded in specific cities. They can also ask users to look for and collect certain visual themes in particular areas and reward them for finding examples of these. The practice of collecting photographic typologies of the street is an artistic tradition that goes back more than a century. Photographic urban explorers such as Eugène Atget, Lisette Model and Michael Wolf, have proven that the photographic typology is a powerful tool for collecting motifs which contribute to the identity of the city. Instagram has proven that there is already an expansive community of keen and expressive amateur street photographers that are building upon these practices. These users are eager to share the notable visual qualities that stand out in their cities and talk about why they are Important. The purpose of Streetset is to offer a platform for such street photography enthusiasts to collectively observe and assemble the aesthetic architectural patterns that punctuate our cities, giving them rhythm and meaning. By recording these patterns as a community, we can better understand the unique qualities of the urban environment and express what these places mean to us.
Note: The participating student will be asked to maintain regular face-to-face and email communication with the Principal Investigator/Supervisor, including weekly meetings/scrums. This is a three-month internship, to commence in mid June. This project is suitable for undergraduate students. Students are expected to work 20-25 hours per week at ITI.
Supervisor: Dr. Marko Radeta
Contact: marko.radeta@m-iti.org
As much as 40 percent of the ocean is heavily affected by pollution, depleted fisheries, loss of coastal habitats and other human activities. Cetaceans remain greatly exposed to direct impact collisions, noise and marine litter pollution. This project provides a public dashboard for longitudinal studies of the human impact on cetacean populations, portraying the sightings, marine litter and underwater marine biodiversity assessments. Collected data will serve as an input to marine biologists to capitalize upon the collected data.
Selected candidate will work in close collaboration with other members of the interdisciplinary team including marine biologists from Ocean Observatory in Madeira.
Applicant should demonstrate (or be willing to gain) next skills and competences:
Note: The participating undergraduate student will be asked to contribute 20-25 hours per week to this project with physical presence at Wave Dome at TECNOPOLO Floor -1. This is a three-month internship, to commence in July 15th.
Supervisor: Prof. Mónica da Silva Cameirão
Contact: monica.cameirao@m-iti.org
Mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety disorders, can severely impact normal behavior, mood and thinking. Consequently, these strongly impact the quality of life of people suffering from such disorders. Treatment methods typically include cognitive behavioral therapy and/or exposure therapy among others. The goal of this project is to develop VR environments with Unity 3D engine designed for people suffering from mental health disorders. These virtual environments can incorporate various input devices (kinect, data gloves, physiology,…) and should expose the participants to standard principles of treatment specific to particular mental health disorders. These environments will be evaluated with people suffering from these disorders.
Note: Students will work 20-25 hours per week in the NeuroRehabLab (https://neurorehabilitation.m-iti.org) of ITI.
Supervisor: Dr. Julian Hanna
Contact: julian.hanna@m-iti.org
Words in Freedom is a project that draws from research on writing to create a collaborative environment for drafting and designing manifestos. As social media in the age of political crisis demonstrates, people want to say something and want to be heard. The difficulty is that it is sometimes hard to know what to say, which is why so many opinions are just reposts of the opinions of others. Through Words in Freedom we want to encourage users to reflect – through collaboration, conscious expression, and public dissemination – on what they stand for and why, and how their beliefs might intersect with the beliefs of others.
For this project, we seek a highly motivated student intern to join our team and help in further developing the Words in Freedom hub and tool suite (wordsinfreedomproject.org).
Note: Students are expected to work 20-25 hours per week at ITI.
