Distributed & Interactive Systems Group
Our research group focuses on facilitating and improving the way people use interactive systems and how people communicate with each other. We combine data science with a strong human-centric, empirical approach to understand the experience of users. This enables us to design and develop next generation intelligent and empathic systems. We base our results on realistic testing grounds and data sets, and embrace areas such as ubiquitous computing, human-centered multimedia systems, and languages.
The group addresses key problems for society and science, following a multi-disciplinary approach. This results in a full-stack methodology that enables us to bridge socio-technical gaps in society and science by instrumenting the appropriate infrastructures and communication protocols using realistic testing grounds.
Distributed and Interactive Systems is an outward-looking research group, that enjoys a number of fruitful partnerships with companies and organizations in the areas of creative industries, smart cities, automotive industry and wellbeing. Our group transfers knowledge through scientific publications, standards bodies, open-source implementations and consultancy. We pride ourselves on pushing boundaries, leading the way for others to follow.
Pinned Items
Symposium on Human-Centered Multimedia to Celebrate Pablo Cesar's Professorship Appointment
Publication date: 2022-04-26
On May 20th 2022, Prof. Dr. Pablo Cesar will give his inaugural lecture at TU Delft, Aula, to celebrate his appointment to professorship. The lecture, titled “Human-Centered Multimedia: Making Remote Togetherness Possible”, will provide an overview of his research with a focus on volumetric video conferencing and the future of eXtended Reality (XR) as a collaboration and communication medium.
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Over One Million Euro for CWI and Sound & Vision for XR Research
Publication date: 2022-11-16
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and Sound & Vision are partners in the recently launched European research project TransMIXR. TransMIXR develops technologies that enable professionals in the cultural and creative industries to create new productions in eXtended Reality (XR), and provides innovative ways to experience immersive media productions. Together, Sound & Vison and CWI have received over 1 million euros to realize their work within the project. This is part of a total of 9 million euros TransMIXR has received from the Horizon Europe Programme.
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DIS Group Supports Community Opera that Premiered in Barcelona
Publication date: 2022-10-19
On 5 October 2022 the world witnessed the premiere of La Gata Perduda (The Lost Cat) at the Liceu opera house in Barcelona. This novel opera was created by the Liceu and migrant residents from the vibrant Raval neighbourhood. CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group played a special part in the process: it developed the Co-Creation Space (CCS) to support the creation of the opera in a digital environment.
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DIS Group Releases Open Source Software for Digital Humanities
Publication date: 2023-03-09
Together with European partners the DIS group investigated the potential which Opera could have to foster social transformation in disparate communities through the use of technology.
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DIS Group Contributes to the Book "Immersive Video Technologies"
Publication date: 2022-11-24
Video technologies have been evolving significantly and in many different directions over the last few decades, with the ultimate goal of providing a truly immersive experience to users. The idea is to give viewers a lifelike perspective. After setting up a common background for these technologies, based on the plenoptic function theoretical concept, the book Immersive Video Technologies offers a comprehensive overview of the leading technologies enabling visual immersion, including omnidirectional (360 degrees) video, light fields, and volumetric video.
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DIS Wins Best Demo Award at ACM Multimedia 2022
Publication date: 2022-10-17
The Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has received the best demo award at ACM International Conference on Multimedia, with the paper “Mediascape XR: A cultural heritage experience in Social VR” by Ignacio Reimat, Yanni Mei, Evangelos Alexiou, Jack Jansen, Jie Li, Shishir Subramanyam, Irene Viola, Johan Oomen, and Pablo Cesar. The MediaScape XR Virtual Museum enables visitors to interact with the heritage artefacts of Sound and Vision in a virtual space shared with other remote visitors, while allowing social interactions in real time between them. This video showcases the work.
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Fine-grained Temporal Emotion Recognition in Video
Publication date: 2022-10-03
Emotions play an important role in users’ selection and consumption of video content. According to the gratification theory, emotions influence users’ video selection either directly, by providing gratifying experiences, or indirectly, by contributing to their cognitive and social needs. Fine-grained emotion recognition is the process of automatically identifying the emotions of users at a fine-level of granularity. This granularity is typically between 0.5s to 4s according to the duration of emotions. By recognizing users’ emotion at a fine level of granularity, we can add an emotion layer on the videos which shows the dynamic changes of users’ emotions. It can help content providers better understand the users' emotions towards their products and adjust the content based on these inferences.
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