Institute of Communication and Computer Systems

From EuroVR Knowledge Base

ICCS, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, is a non profit Academic Research body established in 1989 by the Ministry of Education in order to carry research and development activity in the fields of all diverse aspects of telecommunications systems and techniques, computer systems, and their applications in variety of applications such as transceivers, radar and generally electromagnetic sensors, satellite and wireless communications, electromagnetic phenomena modelling, neural networks, systems, software and hardware engineering, Telematics and multimedia applications, transport applications, control systems, biomedical engineering and electric power. The personnel of ICCS consist of Academic personnel (University Professors - about 80), 20 additional senior researchers and more than 500 research people (including PhD students). There are 20 research laboratories presently active in ICCS. ICCS is very active in European research activities and has been the project manager of many EU projects in various programs (e.g. EC, ISIS, RACE II, ESPRIT, IES, ACTS, INFOSEC, BRITE-EURAM, STRIDE, MIP-Informatics, Telematic Applications, IST, GROWTH, QoL, 6th FW etc).

The Intelligent Robotics and Automation Laboratory (IRAL) of our Institute is pursuing research in the following directions: (a) dynamic modeling and simulation for haptic interaction within virtual environments; for instance, deformable tissue modeling for kinesthetic display in surgical simulation; (b) psychophysical evaluation of haptic display systems. One of our main focuses is on medical applications. We are currently collaborating with the Medical School of the University of Athens, in the frames of an on-going Greek national research project (VRES), which is aiming at the development of a VR-based platform for the training of medical and nursing staff in emergency room procedures. One of the targets of this project is the development and evaluation of a VR-based interactive paracentesis simulator, integrating force feedback for the training and assessment of clinical skills. Main haptic equipment: 2 PHANToM devices: Desktop and Omni.

Projects and Research

VIEW of the Future (1/01/2001-31/12/2003)
The main aim of VIEW was to: "Develop best practice for industrial implementation and use of virtual environments, and integrate VEs in product development, testing and training for workplaces of the future." Within this overall aim there were a number of operational goals for VIEW, which included:

• Identify barriers to VE use
• Assess personal, organisation, societal impact
• Examine the role of VE in workplaces of future
• Develop a usability and health & safety test battery
• Demonstrate application independent VEs
• Develop strategy and guidance for VE application
• Provide interactive VE design support tools
• Produce mobile VE systems prototype
• Transfer lessons to European industry
• Provide a concept for "VE workplace" of the future

VIRTHUALIS: Virtual Reality and Human Factors Applications for Improving Safety, IP, 2005-2009 http://www.virthualis.org/
The overall objective of the VIRTHUALIS project is to reduce hazards in production plant and storage sites by addressing end-users’ practical safety issues, such as training control room operators, designing proper alarm systems, training teams to cope with emergencies, assessing the impact of plant modifications on operators’ reliability, helping managers to see the impact of their decisions on sharp-end operators’ daily work, through the development of an innovative technology. The new technology will be achieved by merging Human Factors (HF) knowledge and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. The innovative character of the VIRTHUALIS technology will be mainly given by the new HF knowledge that will provide both solutions to cope with identified safety-critical issues and the “driving license” to profitably exploit VR technologies. The new HF knowledge will be produced ad hoc to cope with the specific safety case at hand based on the most advanced HF methodological concepts available.

People

• Dr Angelos Amditis
• Giannis Karaseitanidis
• Irene Mantzouranis
• Konstantinos Loupos
• Panagiotis Psonis 
• Dr. Maria Roussou  

VR Equipment

I-SENSE has at its disposal a Power Wall (one Wall VR Cave) using Lightning Software for 3D representations and a number of tools for 3D visualisation. The Power Wall uses stereo passive projection with 2 DLP beamers, 3 control Computers, magnetic tracking for the hand and optical tracking for the head.

Main haptic equipment: 2 PHANToM devices: Desktop and Omni.