--- MINUTES FROM THE *NIW* MEETING ---

12-14 OCTOBER 2009

ISIR - Universitè Pierre et Marie Curie
Paris 6 - France
Room H20

Author: F. Fontana


OCT. 12 - The meeting starts at 2.30pm

Participants:

UNIVR: F. Fontana, M. Civolani
McGill University: Y. Visell
AAU: R. Nordahl, S. Serafin, L. Turchet
INRIA: G. Cirio, T. Regia Corte
UPMC: V. Hayward, N. Ouarti, A. Berrezag


The Coordinator opens the meeting.

2.40pm Management issues

- VH presents his collaborators. He introduces Amir Berrezag as a new member, who substitutes former contractor George Dietz currently going through health problems. Finally, he outlines a possible logistics for the review meeting of the next day, including lunchtime and visit to the demo room. The attendees agree with his plan.

- FF asks about the current position of the consortium about the disclosure level of deliverables, as a question mark is still open concerning the level of protection of D2.1 and D3.1. VH and YV, respectively having responsibility of such deliverables, agree in leaving the content public (PU). The coordinator, hence, agrees in clearing out during the review meeting that D2.1, D3.1, and D4.1, will be published on the project website by the end of the reporting activity.

- Meeting of the General Assembly. FF reminds that another question mark holds concerning the possible amendment of the CA, due to changes in the protection level of products engineered by McGill University and UPMC. Notwithstanding any request in this sense coming from the consortium, the assembly decides to leave the CA as it is. The meeting is closed

- FF points out that the activities and current state of advancement of the project are very clear from the deliverables and the draft of the periodic report, both generated in September. In this sense there is no need to issue this point further, until the review meeting will take place

3.15pm Preparation of the review meeting

- FF shows the slides he has produced for the review concerning the introduction to NIW. Comments and improvements are suggested by the attendants, and are implemented accordingly

- All participants show, in their turn, their own presentations. Suggestions are gathered and implemented accordingly

- A couple of slides on the use of resources are prepared by FF, based on current inputs on person/months coming from the beneficiaries

- A discussion is started concerning the plans for the second year. Since much, about the direction NIW will take, depends on the feedback coming from the reviewers and the project officer, the consortium decides to prepare an early plan that can be taken as a platform for discussion during the review. Hence, two slides are prepared: one, presenting the current level of exchange of hardware, software, and methodologies among beneficiaries; another, showing the activities the consortium wants to do during the second year based on the expected exchange of research personnel that will occur during the coming months

- The whole cluster of slides is finally reviewed and put together, to check their consistency with the agenda and timelines of the review meeting

6.00pm Set up of the demos

- The attendants move downstairs to the labs. VH shows the facilities running at ISIR.

- Four demos are set up for the following day: AAU's sonic pavement, UNIVR's sonic shoes, McGill University's floor tiles, and UPMC's haptic soles. Assembling and checking the settings keeps the consortium busy for the rest of the afternoon and evening

9.00pm All demos working, the meeting is closed.


OCT. 13 - The meeting starts at 9.15pm

Participants:

UNIVR: F. Fontana, M. Civolani
McGill University: Y. Visell
AAU: S. Serafin, L. Turchet
INRIA: A. Lecuyer, G. Cirio, T. Regia Corte
UPMC: V. Hayward, A. Berrezag
Project Officer: P. Hearn
Reviewers: S. O'Modhrain, C. Preusche, S. Glasauer


Plans to welcome the reviewers and set up everything for the meeting.

All day will be devoted to the review meeting, whose official agenda is reported here below for convenience

10.15am - Welcome and tour de table
10.25am - Introduction to the NIW project - F. Fontana
10.45am - Management and financial overview - F. Fontana, A. Lecuyer, S. Serafin, V. Hayward, Y. Visell
11.05am - Technical overview - F. Fontana
11.15am - Highlight 1 - Sonic feedback and actuated shoes and demo - F. Fontana, S. Serafin
11.45pm - Highlight 2 - Haptic hardware engineering: shoes and tiles - V. Hayward, Y. Visell
12.15pm - Highlight 3 - Multimodal feedback and immersive interaction - A. Lecuyer, Y. Visell
12.45pm - Hands on demo session
1.05pm - Lunch
2.05pm - Plans for year 2
2.25pm - General discussion
2.55pm - Private meeting of review panel
3.40pm - Feedback and close
4.05pm - End of the review

The agenda is followed, except for minor modifications decided in due course.

The project officer thanks, also on behalf of the reviewers, the consortium for the organization of the review meeting. The review panel leaves the meeting place.

4.45pm - Preliminary considerations

The consortium tries to capture the main points of the review. Preliminary comments on the project's state of advancement, which have been anticipated by the reviewers, seem to be essentially positive. On the other hand, the consortium is challenged to better group the different components together during the second year. Some late brainstorming is attempted, whose outcome is left to the following day.

The meeting closes at 5.30pm


OCT. 14 - The meeting starts at 10.15am

Participants:

UNIVR: F. Fontana, M. Civolani
McGill University: Y. Visell
AAU: S. Serafin, L. Turchet
INRIA: A. Lecuyer, G. Cirio, T. Regia Corte
UPMC: V. Hayward, A. Berrezag

10.30am Management issues

- FF tries to wrap up considerations on the feedback coming from the reviewers. Overall, the impression is that the project had a positive review. The activity made so far has been judged satisfactory, resulting in multiple components all representing the state of the art in the respective topic. Conversely, the reviewers' concern is about how the consortium will be able to glue such multiple diverse and manifold experiences into some more coherent framework during the second year. Furthermore, official requests consist in re-submitting D2.1, currently rejected, as well as preparing D7.1 containing information about the structure of the project website, and comprehensive of the statistics about the visits. The consortium agrees with such general considerations.

- FF solicits the compilation if the financial forms that have to be included in the periodic report. The coordinator, hence, will make the related form templates available to all beneficiaries by Oct. 20, while expecting to receive their feedback by Oct. 30

- FF suggests to have all the missing material (i.e. D2.1, D7.1, and periodic report) ready by Oct. 30, in a way to deliver everything in one shot while having sufficient time to further improve the same material before the 60 day deadline expires.

- FF suggests to keep track of the running missions online. For this reason, he will simply put a text file available in the website, that every beneficiary will fill up with person name, origin, destination, dates, and short motivations of the mission. In this way, the consortium can have a running image of the state of the research exchanges occurring during the project implementation.

- AL underlines the granted possibility to update the deliverables with content also after they have been published. This possibility represent an optimal solution to the problem of disclosing research at public deliverable level, before presentation and/or publication at conferences and journals. Holding this possibility, INRIA has no longer the problem of re-discussing the disclosure level of deliverable 5.1. The same possibility is positively judged by the rest of the consortium.

11.15 Dissemination issues

The consortium is already at the center of an intense dissemination activity, holding also several requests for participation of NIW to events in the field of virtual reality and interaction design. One of these requests come from Laval Virtual, currently one of the most interesting events in Europe for the demonstration and dissemination of man-machine interfaces involving aspects of virtual reality.

- AL has submitted a proposal about walking in VR at a call for tutorials on the 2010 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality

- AL has been invited to give a tutorial on haptic in VR's at Laval Virtual in Laval, France

- FF has been asked to participate with NIW at Laval Virtual in Laval, France

- FF has been asked to organize the next HAID conference.

- VH is interested in participating to the Eurohaptics and Worldhaptics conferences, deadline January 2010

- SS will co-organize Haid 2010 using project's "Other" costs. Proposed date for the conference is September 2010. Further info will be submitted by SS to the consortium.

Other plans for research missions are issued. Among these, GC's visit to McGil University as well as TRC's mission to UNIVR.


12.00 Long-term scenario

FF urges to try sharing a common development scenario for the project. Ideas are gathered from the consortium

- FF: "virtual pathway" -> locomotion, postural rehabilitation
- VH: nano-presence -> interacting with nano materials
- non visual contribution in locomotion tasks
- more basic research in contact modeling with different material

FF tries to find common acceptance on the virtual pathway scenario, as it could gather together diverse components that are running within the project

12.30 Book

An initial discussion is started, concerning the preparation of a book as stated in the project grant agreement.

- YV candidates himself for preparing an initial statement on the book. Idea: contacting people working on new frontiers of walking, in a way to collect several tutorial/survey articles on the broader topic of walking.

13.00 Closing issues

The next meeting is scheduled to take place next February in Verona, hosted by UNIVR.

Possible following candidates: Montreal (July 2010), Rennes (October 2010).

Recollection of the devices used for the demo.

Closing.