PEACH

Presence is an emerging field focusing on understanding the cognitive experience of being somewhere and developing technologies to generate and augment it (being someone or something, somewhere, sometime, without physically being there).

By nature a deeply interdisciplinary field, Presence spans a wide range of subjects: from neuroscience and cognition to artificial intelligence, sensors and systems. This horizontal character makes Presence a fascinating and fertile interdisciplinary field, but it is can also stunt its growth, as researchers are scattered across disciplines and groups worldwide. A coordination activity promoting discipline connect, identity building and integration while defining future research and policy directions is needed.

The first goal of the three-year long PEACH Coordination Action is to stimulate, structure and support the research community, with special attention to the challenges associated to the interdisciplinary character of the field, and to produce visions and roadmaps to support the construction of the Presence ERA.

Secondly, because Presence research is set to produce disruptive technologies which can cause profound social impact and raise serious ethical issues, PEACH will analyse the relation of Presence technologies with society (trends, ethics, legal aspects), foster the contact of researchers with the market and enhance the Public Understanding of Presence research and technology.

PEACH will achieve its objectives by providing an open central information point for all the stakeholders, using a working methodology based on Working Groups and Action Events (Consultation Meetings, Summer Schools, a Science Fair and an Industry Event).

Based on a review of existing standards or standard initiatives, CERTH/ITI will provide recommendations on technologies, protocols, data standards for experimental work towards efficient data sharing analysing of international existing resources for compatibility.

CERTH/ITI will set up a moderated sample experiment data repository in the peach web http://data.peachbit.org for the community: physiological data, tracking, interviews, video, questionnaires, with supporting documentation for anyone to be able to use (including references…), and providing Guidelines for acknowledging use of the data in publications. The task in the PEACH CA would seek to define/understand what experiment projects can involve (experimental landscaping). The idea is to promote open exchange of data and a good common practice baseline. Quality of the database will be critical for its use.

Summer Workshops are proven to be an efficient and effective tool to encourage students, young and senior researches to create new research communities. Thus, CERTH/ITI will organize two summer workshop/Jamboree Events, each lasting 3 days, with support from the Presence IPs. The intention is to share knowledge and vision future research areas. The first one will focus on the Measurement Problem and Foundations, the second one

will be Application oriented.

Consortium

Starlab Barcelona SL, Research Department (S)

Napier University (UK)

CERTH-ITI, Center for Research and Technology Hellas (GR)

Instituto di Tecnologie Industriali Automazione (I)

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (DE)

Telecom Italia, (I)

University of Oxford, (UK)

University of Zagreb, (CRO)

LSR – Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, (DE)