Now that Summer is over and the academic year has started it’s the perfect time for the Network’s Executive team to reflect upon the network’s successes during the last session and put the final touches in place for our programme of events until December 2016.
The main theme that ran through the network’s events last session was developments in vision technology for healthcare applications.
We kicked started the session off with the inaugural IET International Conference on Technologies for Active and Assisted Living (TechAAL) held at Kingston University and organised by Dr Francisco Florez Revuelta. It is a fact that many European countries have ageing populations; individuals who wish to lead active, independent, and fulfilling lives for as long as possible and TechAAL created a forum for professionals and researchers to meet and discuss current and future technologies and trends.
One comment that comes up time and time again is the transition of engineering from traditional, siloed areas to become multi-disciplinary, surely the only way we will be able to tackle modern issues, and active and assisted living is a perfect example of how imaging, healthcare and robotics technology are coming together to deliver real-world solutions.
At last year’s conference we heard about the development of a service robot to aid social interaction. Whilst is seems hard to envisage human-like robots keeping loneliness at bay, robot cat trials in care homes have proven very popular and are now available to purchase on the open market. Other advances in TechAAL include fall detection cameras, but of course this raises one major concern – privacy, and for the immediate future this concern is going to remain one of the biggest external challenges to the technology. The issue was addressed by Malcom Fisk’s fantastic keynote on Protection from Abuse? Resolving the Privacy Dilemma with Cameras and Other Surveillance Technologies.
TechAAL created a springboard for us to host our one-day seminar in May on Human Motion Sensing Analysis for Healthcare Applications at the newly refurbished Savoy Place. The event was developed and Chaired by the Vision & Imaging network’s Vice-Chair, Dr Dimitrios Makris, Kingston University and Dr Victoria Bloom, Coventry University. It’s always exciting to watch an event programme coming together, but when it includes keynote speakers from Microsoft, Bristol University and NHS you know you have something very special on offer for the community. Again, the focus of the event was to create an open forum to bring together researchers, healthcare practitioners, industry and academics to discuss current issues and future solutions, and from the buzz during breaks I think we can say we achieved that!
So, what’s next? Well we have a busy year ahead! The 2nd TechAAL conference will take place next week on Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th October at Savoy Place, London and from there we’re off to Madrid with Chairman Prof. Sergio Velastin for the 7th International Conference on Imaging for Crime Detection and Prevention (ICDP 2016). This biennial conference has a long relationship with the network and we are delighted to have the opportunity to be co-sponsoring the conference once again. The programme continues to have an international focus, with work presented from across Europe and Asia. If you’re interested in the developments in the field, then catch-up on the presentations from 2015. One of the presentations that stood out for me was Dr Chris Mann’s keynote on Advances in Passive Stand-off Imaging in the Millimetre and Sub-millimetre wave Region, which discussed technologies that could be utilised in public areas to detect IEDs.
Submissions are now in for the network’s best MSc and PhD prize and I’m excited to see the submission topics hear the judges decisions. This is the 3rd year we’ve run the prize and it’s always very close due to the exceptional papers submitted. A bonus of my job is having the opportunity to meet the next generation of academics and researchers and hear what they’re working on, so keep an eye out for our winners’ announcement.
Once 2017 hits we have another raft of conferences around the world that we’re co-sponsoring and the Intelligent Imaging event held in collaboration with the KTN – so keep an eye out for further information and make sure you save the dates. I hope to see you there!