A Disney R&D group, headed up Irishman Dr Joe Marks, has three joint research projects underway with Ireland's research centre Clarity, writes DICK AHLSTROM

A DECISION made by the Disney Company in California to ramp up inhouse research activity has brought benefits to scientists here in Ireland. The company has three joint research projects underway with the Clarity Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Disney approach was led by an ex-pat Dubliner who had previous experience of the research expertise available here in the area of mobile communications and sensor technology. This has led to a fruitful international collaboration for this Cset, set up in April 2008 with a public and private sector investment of €16.4 million.

Clarity is a combined research centre involving academic research teams based in Dublin City University, University College Dublin and the Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork.

Its connection with Disney came via Dr Joe Marks, a vice-president of research, who was in Dublin last month with six Disney colleagues to meet Clarity team members. They came in from Disney’s Burbank headquarters as well as its key Pittsburgh-based lab and from its centre in Zurich.

Marks left his north Dublin home in 1979. “I got a chance to go to Harvard University for my undergraduate degree,” he says. He thought he might give it at least a year to see how it would go and never left.

He completed three degrees there, including a PhD, before becoming involved in industrial research. He spent time with Mitsubishi in Boston as research director before moving to Los Angeles and Disney in 2006. He already knew some of the Clarity members at DCU, initiating joint research projects while still at Mitsubishi. This created an ideal collaborative effort once Marks moved to Disney.

That came not long after the company had bought Pixar, the hugely successful animation firm that was deeply involved in the advanced video and computer research needed to produce its exceptional films. Interest in “renewing the research culture at Disney” came as a result of the Pixar purchase, he says. Pixar’s approach, and now that of Disney, is summed up by its chief creative officer, John Lasseter: “Art challenges the technology and technology inspires the art. That is in a nutshell how we work at Pixar.”

The acquisition of research-intensive Pixar prompted Disney to look at its own research activity, eventually deciding to undertake a major increase in R&D activities across all its business units, says Marks. He arrived just as this effort was beginning to ramp up, and there was a great deal of activity in his own areas of expertise including computer graphics and human- computer interfaces.

“Disney research is a collection of labs within the different business units,” he says. It is startlingly varied, involving very advanced basic research but also applied research. In effect it functions like an academic research centre, opening its doors to visiting professors and post docs, and also publishing research in peer reviewed journals and attending research meetings.

Research efforts feed back into film production but also advancements made within the Disney parks, communications, internet, games, robots, novel human-to-machine interfaces and even the development of toys, he says.

Disney’s huge sports affiliate, ESPN, also has research units working on sports visualisation and broadcast presentation, he adds. “We do research that is relevant to all of these businesses.”

Marks is now a senior player in this activity, and in a position to consider joint projects with Clarity. There was no surprise that opportunities opened up however. “Many aspects of Clarity are relevant to our business. When you look at the Disney research it matched up with Clarity, there are many areas of overlap.”

The existing three projects are focussed on two areas of importance to Disney. The first is “mobile computing”, taken to mean the use of wireless communications in the widest range of applications. For example, it encompasses wireless communications links but also in park requirements such as controlling robotics.

The second is in the area of sports, of particular importance given the ESPN business units. The focus here is on developing novel ways for viewers to both watch but also interact with sporting events. “It is an important feature of sports broadcasting, adding visual elements that make watching more exciting for sports fans.”

Clarity has a tailor-made project of interest to Disney/ESPN given its involvement with Tennis Ireland to assist training and coaching of Ireland’s top tennis players. It has developed a range of sensors and tracking systems which map the movements of a player on the court.

Advanced research such as this could very easily feed back into novel new visual effects and on-screen explanations being sought as new services for sports viewers. Clarity’s connection with Disney is not unique. “Clarity is just one of our university collaborations around the world,” says Marks. “Engaging with the global community is a hallmark of how we are going to do research going forward,” he says.

Giving some Clarity as Disney links up in supporting sensor web

THE WALT Disney Company has three advanced research projects underway with the Clarity Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology. Disney’s interest in Clarity comes via the centre’s deep engagement with “sensor web technology”, a step on from the world wide web, says Dublin City University’s Prof Noel O’Connor, a principal investigator within Clarity.

The latest project got its formal start-up in mid-October when seven senior Disney research staff, including two vice presidents for research, attended a series of meetings with Clarity staff at DCU and at UCD.

Disney’s interests matched those of Clarity in terms of what the sensor webcan deliver in areas such as sport and also information delivery systems that support sensor web technology.

O’Connor describes the sensor web as a natural evolution from the world wide web. The web is based on the delivery of text, sound, video and more information than anyone can handle. Yet it is evolving all the time, driven by user demand.

It has expanded to encompass the “social web” with social networking services such as Facebook and Myspace, but also Twitter, Flicker and YouTube. Then there is the “blogosphere” that grows as blogs are added and these begin to interconnect.

The next big thing will be the sensor web, O’Connor says. It will arise from our growing ability to place and collect data from sensors distributed virtually anywhere. You see its approach today in the link-up between Nike and Apple iPod, says O’Connor. You drop a wireless sensor – actually an accelerometer – into your shoe. It in turn talks to your iPod giving information about your training run while playing your favourite music. I

f the web delivered a flood of data, the sensor web will give a veritable ocean of information. “It will create even more challenges given [the information] will be vast and unstructured,” he says. “Who will participate? Everyone.”

Its freeform nature will make this difficult. “How can that information be gathered, how can it be understood and how can it be fed back to the user,” he asks.

Clarity’s mission is to support the sensor web. Each partner, including DCU, UCD and the Tyndall National Institute atUCC delivers a particular skill-set to help deliver this goal. This has obviously interested Disney. Two of its projects with Clarity involve sensor systems applied to sports.

The third, which brought Disney staff to Ireland last month, is in the development of ways to deliver information to the end user.

It is a “nice match-up between Clarity and Disney”, he adds. “They are very selective and we are one of a very small number of research centres they are engaging with on this scale.”