Today, I want to write about the project I am working in: the Junior Research Group VICCI

VICCI stands for “Visual and Interactive Cyber-physical systems Control and Integration”.

Core topic are the Cyber-Physcial Systems (short: CPS). Ask ten people what CPS are and you will get ten answers. It is just not clear yet. Here is my opinion:

CPS are “smart”, (semi-)autonome systems (networks) of elements (embedded systems) which have both, a real-world object (e.g. sensors or actuators) as well as a virtuell object (image of data in software). The interconnected elements together form a system capable of optimizing and adapting itself, supporting or performing processes in the real world.

Well, this description is not really clear, is it. Maybe like this: CPS are “automation 3.0”. While classical automation only uses simple control loops or are just remote controls, CPS can optimize and adapt their control mechanisms by themselves. Typical buzzwords are “Smart Factory”, “Smart Grid”, “Smart Office”, “Smart Home”, etc. It is always the idea that the surrounding “thinks along”.

In the VICCI project we follow the scenario of a “smart home”, an apartment which is thinking along and which supports it’s residents. For example, simple transportation or search tasks can be handled. Our CPS consist of sensors and actuators. The sensors are placed in a computer lab which will represent our model-apartment. We have sensores for temperature, light, humidity, cameras, etc. As actuators we have robots which are exemplary for service robots. You remember I, Robot. We (scientists) are working on it ;-)

My field of work with our group is (in addition to coordination and administrative tasks) the visualization of CPS, more precisely, the internal state of the CPS. I create visualizations for analyzing: “What does the CPS think?” First results exist, but are not published yet. As soon as they are, I will write about them here.

What a week.

The deadline for paper submission for the EuroVis 2013 was this weekend. I wanted to submit my current work there, and therefore the motto for this week was: “paper writing and polishing”. Hard work! And now I am curious about the results. I am satisfied with my results, but, of course, the reviewers have to be satisfied as well. And a bit of luck is required as well, as there is strong competition.

However, because the double blind reviewing process is now running, I, of course, cannot write about this work here (yet).

[bibshow]

In the years from 2007 to 2012 I worked at the Visualization Research Center of the University of Stuttgart, respectively at the Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems. The core topic of my work was research and development of visualizations for data sets from molecular dynamics simulations. My work was financed by the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 716 of the German Research Foundation (DFG). One goal was to be able to handle ever larger data sets in interactive visualization. A second goal was to support efficient visual analysis, utilizing meaningful representations derived from the original data.

Finally, in 2007 I presented my first work at the IEEE VIS Conference in Sacramento, a paper with the title “Visual Verification and Analysis of Cluster Detection for Molecular Dynamics” [bibcite key=Grottel2007nucleation]. This work focuses on algorithms for detecting of clusters of molecules, predecessors of liquid droplets in vapor. Each of these detection algorithms has its strong and weak points. Therefore, the visual analysis and comparison of the results are very important. Especially the temporal stability of the detected clusters and their interaction with each other are crucial factors.

Thus we (my colleagues and I) defined “flow groups” to identify interesting areas within the data sets. A “flow group” is a group of molecules, moving from one point in time from one molecule cluster to a second molecule cluster at a second point in time, this this group comprises all molecules switch between two clusters together. This definition enables us to visually judge the stability of an algorithm and even to compare two different algorithms. This publication was the first corner stone for my dissertation thesis: “Point-based Visualization of Molecular Dynamics Data Sets”.

I decided to write more about my “work” here.

I am doing research in the field of interactive Visualization of large data sets from scientific sources, like physical simulations. Additionally, I am interested in the visual analysis of abstract but structured data, like graphs. I focus on efficient representation and exploration.

Currently I am employed as PostDoc at the Technical University Dresden at the Computer Graphics and Visualization lab. Next up I will post and discuss some of my older works here.