TEAMwISE: synchronised immersive environments for exploration and analysis of animal behaviour

The recent availability of affordable and lightweight tracking sensors allows researchers to collect large and complex movement data sets. To explore and analyse these data, applications are required that are capable of handling the data while providing an environment that enables the analyst(s) to focus on the task of investigating the movement in the context of the geographic environment it occurred in. We present an extensible, open-source framework for collaborative analysis of geospatial–temporal movement data with a use case in collective behaviour analysis. The framework TEAMwISE supports the concurrent usage of several program instances, allowing to have different perspectives on the same data in collocated or remote set-ups. The implementation can be deployed in a variety of immersive environments, for example, on a tiled display wall and mobile VR devices. Graphic abstract

Development of Informal Communication Environment Using Interactive Tiled Display Wall

In the early stage of planning or design, it is desired to support the informal communication between remote sites. In this study, informal communication environment between remote places was constructed by using the interactive tiled display wall.This system measures the user's gesture as well as captures the user's image by using the multiple fish-eye cameras. Then, the remote users can communicate with each other by using the touch interaction in the shared space. This system was applied to the remote communication and the effectiveness of this method in the informal communication was experimentally evaluated.

Are Tiled Display Walls Needed for Astronomy?

Clustering commodity displays into a Tiled Display Wall (TDW) provides a cost-effective way to create an extremely high resolution display, capable of approaching the image sizes now generated by modern astronomical instruments. Many research institutions have constructed TDWs on the basis that they will improve the scientific outcomes of astronomical imagery. We test this concept by presenting sample images to astronomers and non-astronomers using a standard desktop display (SDD) and a TDW. These samples include standard English words, wide field galaxy surveys and nebulae mosaics from the Hubble telescope. Our experiments show that TDWs provide a better environment than SDDs for searching for small targets in large images. They also show that astronomers tend to be better at searching images for targets than non-astronomers, both groups are generally better when employing physical navigation as opposed to virtual navigation, and that the combination of two non-astronomers using a TDW rivals the experience of a single astronomer. However, there is also a large distribution in aptitude amongst the participants and the nature of the content also plays a significant role in success.