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RealVNC is a spin out company launched by the University of Cambridge researchers who developed Virtual Network Computing (VNC) remote access technology. VNC allows connection and control of devices from anywhere in the world, irrespective of operating system. VNC is now the default mechanism for remote sharing of graphical desktops across the internet. RealVNC has sold over 300 million licences across 175 countries. The company has won three Queen's Awards for Enterprise and the Royal Academy of Engineering's MacRobert Award, the UK's premier engineering prize.
Research undertaken between 2002 and 2012 at Birkbeck has helped establish a participatory approach to cyber-physical computing as the predominant methodology for the construction of mobile and pervasive computing systems. Cyber-physical systems intimately interlink material entities and their information representations as existing on the Internet. Our specific research contributions in systems architecture, privacy protection and human dynamics have demonstrated how the user's activity can be exploited as the core ingredient in building such systems. Our research has resulted in the implementation of applications that are used to monitor biodiversity across the globe, to assess and support Parkinson's disease patients in the UK, to improve the well-being of office workers in London, to engage the public in a debate about the costs and benefits of pervasive computing, and to inform legislatures in the UK and the US.
University of Cambridge research on the principles of `sentient computing' led to the foundation of spin-out company Ubisense, which has grown into a leading location solutions company. By the end of 2011, Ubisense had 170 employees and was floated on AIM with a valuation of £38.6million. It serves customers such as BMW, Airbus, Aston Martin and the US Army. Deployment of the Ubisense Real Time Location System has improved production line accuracy and efficiency by up to 10%.
Agent-based computing is a new paradigm for building complex socio-technical systems composed of many interacting intelligent and autonomous components. New co-ordination and negotiation algorithms developed at the University of Southampton, have provided new methods for managing such interactions in a flexible manner. This study focuses on their applications in two new start-up companies (Aerogility and Aroxo) in the defence, aerospace and civil contingency sectors (e.g. BAE Systems, Ministry of Defence and Hampshire County Council) in helping the GB Sailing Team to success at the 2012 Olympics, and in monitoring the environment for effects of climate change.
Computational Linguistics research at Aberdeen concentrates on Natural Language Generation (NLG), an area of Artificial Intelligence. NLG raises difficult issues about what makes a text effective. This case study explains how our Computing Science department has brought these issues to the general public, aiming to improve public understanding of, and enthusiasm for, Artificial Intelligence. This has been achieved through two projects, targeting different sections of the public. The Joking Computer project explains the mechanisms behind verbal humour, allowing non-scientists to engage with computer programs that generate puns. The online Joking Computer has received 200,000 hits, and allows users to contribute data to the research by rating its jokes. The second project targets a more sophisticated section of the public in a book entitled Not Exactly: in Praise of Vagueness. This book, which builds on years of research on Natural Language Generation, illuminates the role of vagueness in science and computing and has triggered worldwide debate on the role of precision in scientific, social, and political discourse, meeting with an enthusiastic reception. To date it has sold well over 6,000 copies.
Mobile technologies and in particular mobile applications have become key drivers of the economy in many countries especially those that lack established communications infrastructures. Since 2003, the research team led by Professor Al-Begain has created both significant infrastructure and know-how that became the base for the creation of the £6.4million Centre of Excellence in Mobile Applications and Services (CEMAS) that is providing research and development to SMEs in Wales to increase their competitiveness. In the first three years since its inception 28 projects have been completed and 66 companies have received services.
Lancaster University's pioneering research on Quality-of-Service (QoS) architecture has led to significant impact on the development of TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) — the digital radio standard used by emergency and public safety services globally. The route to impact was via UK projects on Mobile and Emergency Multimedia. It involved the transfer of QoS technology and know-how to HW Communications Ltd (HWC), a Lancaster-based SME. HWC became instrumental in developing the outcomes of our collaboration in TETRA's Multimedia Exchange Layer (MEX) standard and its specification for TETRA II (or TETRA Enhanced Data Services, TEDS) — a new version of TETRA that enables multimedia data services. MEX was adopted as a new clause in the TETRA II release in 2010. The impact is that vendors of TETRA equipment manufactured after 2010 can implement MEX in their products, thereby leveraging Lancaster's pioneering QoS research to enable applications to obtain the best possible level of service in a standardised way — which is absolutely crucial for the public-safety and related applications for which TETRA is being used.
In 1997 Professor David MacKay of the University of Cambridge Department of Physics developed Dasher, a software accessibility tool for entering text by zooming through letters displayed on a screen. Dasher has since transformed computing for tens of thousands of individuals unable to use a normal keyboard, and is recommended by many charities involved in assistive technologies, such as the European Platform for Rehabilitation network. Since 2008, Dasher has been downloaded over 75,000 times and has been ported to smart phones, making use of input devices such as tilt sensors and joysticks. Linking Dasher's information-efficient text generation from gestures or gaze direction to text-to-speech or real-time-text output channels has made Dasher an ideal component of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems which address digital exclusion.
Since 1998, Leeds Met researchers have worked closely with national arts charity Axis which operates the UK database of contemporary artists. Research focused on how artists can make best use of online platforms to present and sell their work and develop their practice. The collaboration made Axis a digital leader in the arts and helped secure its continued funding in an otherwise volatile arts funding sector, benefitting more than 2,800 UK SMEs (artists and curators). It also resulted in the spin-out of a commercial company that provided Axis with extra income of more than £150,000.
Members of the Work, Interaction and Technology (WIT) Research Centre, King's College London have had a significant impact on the ways in which a number of global corporations and other major organisations design, deploy and evaluate advanced systems. They have developed innovative video research methods that have provided critical resources for organisations, including Hitachi, Xerox, BT, Microsoft, and London Underground, to undertake fine-grained analysis of work, communication and technology in complex organisational environments. Their methods and approach have formed the foundation to a range of more applied `interventions' in areas that include health care, transport, education, markets and the cultural industries.