Overview

Two important trends in computing are the diversification of computing devices from PCs to a multitude of mobile devices and the move from document and forms-based interaction to more sophisticated interaction involving dynamic multimedia objects. Over the last few years, companies have unveiled a flood of new computing devices with different input/output modalities: Ultra mobile PCs; Smartphones; Tablet PCs and more. The devices are pervasive in all sectors and drive market demand.

The major difficulty in Information Communication Technology (ICT) is that software is not keeping pace with hardware. Today's computing devices cannot be used in unison and their full potential is unrealised. They function independently, although can be linked through the internet. A user cannot move seamlessly from one device to another, for example, from reading email on a Smartphone to reading it on a PC or a watch, or in a car. This research aims to investigate techniques and prototype software tools to effectively provide an adaptive coordinating middleware framework for multimedia-rich applications, which can seamlessly support collaboration through multi-modal communications between different devices, particularly wireless ones.

For more information, visit our project area pages:

• Collaborative 3D for mobile and desktop computers
• Multimodal multimedia Wikis
• Collaboration and geographic information for mobile computers
• Mobile motion model