Campus de Azurem
4800-058 Guimarães
Portugal
The CCG/ZGDV Institute was created in 1993 as a private, non-profit making association. Its principal mission is applied scientific and technological research in the area of Computer Graphic and Information Systems, and it focuses on the development of activities and participation in national and international R&TD projects. CCG has as its constituent members the University of Minho and ZGDV - Zentrum fuer Graphische Datenverabeitung in Darmstadt, and various enterprises, as well as national and foreign institutions. In order to promote R&TD in Computer Graphics and Information Systems as areas of its basic competence, CCG also assumed the role of a centre for technological transfer from the University of Minho to Portuguese enterprises (industry and SME) and institutions. In particular, CCG takes part in the management structure of the Centro ALGORITMI in what concerns the R&D Strategic Programme 2015/2020 funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT).
CCG is also a founding member of the excellence network GraphicsMedia.net: an International Network of Cooperation in Applied Research in Computer Graphics Technology, and Multimodal-Multimedia Visual Interactive Digital Technologies, aiming to create a strong network of collaboration in applied research at international level.
Moreover CCG is member of the New European Media Initiative (NEM) and recently partner of the NESSI Platform (Networked European Software and Services Initiative). Additionally, CCG is also an active member of two national clusters: TICE.PT, focusing on Information Technologies, Communication and Electronics; and Health Cluster Portugal, focusing on health.
CCG has proven-track experience concerning R&D and industrial project execution, with dozens national and international projects, with partnerships involving various enterprise and public organizations, as well as R&D entities. Its R&D activities target 4 areas of applied research:
- (1) Computer Vision Interaction and Graphics (CVIG), focusing on computer visual, virtual and augmented reality, human-machine interaction;
- (2) Engineering Process Maturity and Software Quality (EPMQ), responsible for quality and systems engineering process maturity, big data and data analytics as well as cloud computing;
- (3) Perception, Interaction and Usability (PIU), responsible for activities with respect to human behavior, perception and multi-modal integration, as well as interface and user experience;
- (4) Urban and Mobile Computing (UMC), focusing in urban space evolution, through urban and mobile computing, sensing and geospacing.
CCG - Centro de Computação Gráfica
CCG - Centro de Computação Gráfica
The cVIG’s (computer Vision Interaction & Graphics) laboratory is equipped with several state-of-the-art technologies under the scope of technological-scientific fields of the group. Follows a resumed list of available hardware:
Cameras:
- Color:
- Industrial Cameras + package of lens;
- Webcams;
- Depth:
- MSFT Kinect One;
- Asus Xtion;
- MSFT Kinect v1;
SmartGlasses:
- Augmented Reality:
- MSFT Hololens;
- Epson Moverio Bt 200;
- HMD Trivision;
- Vusix Wrap 920Ar;
- Virtual Reality:
- HTC Vive;
- Oculus Rift;
- CardBoards for Smartphone usage;
Human Machine Interaction:
- Leap Motion;
- EEG Emotic EPOC;
- Remote Joystick;
Processing Units:
- Embeded Systems:
- Raspeberry PI;
- Odroid;
- High Processing Power:
- i7-6950x 3Ghz; 64Gb ram; SLI 4-way Geforce GTX 1080 6GBram; 500GB SSD
The PIU laboratory has a CAVE environment comprising the following equipments
1 Projector Christie WV7K-J
4 Precision R7610 with Nvidia Quadro K5000 & Intel® Xeon® E5-2609 v2
1 Vicon DSP Giganet
5 Vicon T20S
1 Sound Level Meter B&K 2270 with Bz-7222/Bz-7223 Modules and 4189 Mic ½''
1 Fonte Sonora Omnidirecional B&K 4295
2 Precision R7910 with Nvidia Quadro K5000 & Intel® Xeon® E5-2609 v2
CCG has a proven track experience of 23 years in executing R&D projects with its focal point on the market and company needs. Acts as an interface between the academia and the industry, thus using the knowledge developed in the university and applying it towards the needs identified by industrial entity.
The different department have specific competencies, which can be interconnect in the different phases of a project. With more detail, the different services that CCG can offer to the market are:
- Urban and Mobile Computing department
- IoT - Connectivity between equipment and information systems to obtain a centralization of information; real time data collection with different technologies and sensors
- Real Time Location Systems - information about real time location of people and equipment; systems based in virtual geographic barriers (geofencing); learning solutions based on space occupation (space learning)
- Smart Industry - real-time follow-up of production lines; intelligent monitoring systems; intelligent automation to diminish energetic waste and efficient expenditure control
- Computer Vision Interaction and Graphics
- Computer Vision - extraction of information from images. Different fields of activity have been the focus: electronic surveillance (detection and tracking, recognition of people or objects, vehicles), medical images, object recognition, industrial applications (defect detection, quality inspection).
- Computer Graphics - development of high quality virtual characters for a multitude of scenarios, including mobile devices; development of serious games (engine game devolopment and user interaction), creation and navigation in virtual environment, avatars;
- Human-machine interaction - by using natural user interface as an input, CVIG is able to conceive virtual assistants as output; interactive application, like multi-touch/multi-user tables.
- Creation of immersive applications through virtual reality goggles
- Creation and development of augment reality applications, desktop or mobile based.
- Engineering Process Maturity and Quality. This department focuses on industrial domains, smart cities and health & care
- Design of reference architectures allowing the structuring, development, integration and operation of all technological relevant systems
- Design and development of data architectures for analysis, visualization and decision making in real-time
- Design of interoperability solutions between different sources of information
- Design and development of systems for electronic governance and management, in real-time environments
- Project and process life cycle management
- Development of database and multidimensional database systems for business and geo-referrencing. Fusion, cleaning and data consolidation, supporting heterogeneity from different data sources
- Design and development of architectures for cloud computing according to normalized models
- Conception and development of open and linked data infrastructure,
- Development of dashboards for visualization and information analysis
- Predictive models and algorithms for tendency analysis, behavior change, risk mitigation, machine learning.
- IT support for optimization of clinical processes, including information in real-time for optimal decision making and clinical investigation
- Integration of monitoring and telemedicine devices
- Perception Interaction & Usability
- R&D on topics related to sensorial, perceptive and interactive processing
- Evaluation and assessment of usability and user experience of products, services or stand-alone solutions in the field of ICT
- Application of psychophysics methods to obtain integration of different modalities and perceptive thresholds;
- Creation of unimodal and multimodal stimulus
- Development of computer generated environments with high control of time-space characteristics of different systems.
- Development and use of immersive environments (coding, calibration, trend analysis, experimental validation)
- Creation and projection of visual and audio 3D stimulus
- Study and validation of new methods of auralization
- Determination of good connection and synchronization between audio, visual and user tracking projection systems
- Creation of databases of human movement, functional tasks of human superior members
- Implementation of routines for the construction of animated visual stimulus with human movement
- characterization of trends of healthy and non-healthy movement; variables which are sensitive to the categorization of movements; study of the synchronization mechanisms of spontaneous or intentional movement
- Acceptance and needfinding studies related to infotainment or driving active support
- Implementation of usability tests, passing through moderation techniques in the elicitation of user experience information
Additionally CCG is focused on service based locations through the use of real time location systems.