sholes

ATLAS research spins off to Catalyze CU

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 18:32:34 +0000

ATLAS research spins off to Catalyze CU Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/21/2021 - 12:32

Of the six companies selected to participate in Catalyze CU over the summer, two are teams from the ATLAS Institute.

Catalyze CU is a highly selective, summer-long startup accelerator that combines world-class mentorship, funding and dedicated co-working space. The program helps the most promising ventures from across the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus reach escape velocity–providing some funding without taking any equity.

CHROMAPRAXIS, a tattoo ink innovation company with research developed in the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab and founded by Assistant Professor Carson Bruns and Jesse Butterfield, a mechanical engineering PhD student, has been accepted. The company has two product lines:

Dermadaptive Ink enables tattoo artists to pioneer a new form of body art as dynamic as the body itself, with color-changing pigments that morph tattoos’ appearance in different lighting.
Invelanin Ink lowers skin aging and skin cancer risk by providing permanent, invisible sun protection. Unlike sunscreen, a one-time, minimally invasive Invelanin procedure provides years of protection without ever making the skin sticky, oily, or shiny.

Also accepted is LoopSketch, a remote, real-time collaborative software platform for "sketching" musical ideas with friends using user-recorded loops, AI-recommended loops and AI-created loops. With research developed by ATLAS PhD Student Darren Sholes in the ACME Lab, LoopSketch focuses on group flow and brainstorming, allowing for a remote experience that feels more like an in-person jam session. It makes it possible for musicians in different locations to collaborate and quickly build rich, multilayered recordings. Sholes pitched LoopSketch to judges during CU �鶹ӰԺ’s New Venture Challenge 14 Prize Night on March 17, winning first place in the newcomer competition (event video here), which came with $5,000 in funding.

Catalyze CU has helped founding teams go from idea to impact, and from prototype to production. Catalyze alumni have a strong track record of being accepted to top tier accelerators like Techstars, raising funding, winning grants and launching successful Kickstarters. participants will be with a cohort of other highly performing teams.

ATLAS Board of Advisors member Kyle Kuczun is one of the coaches for this cohort.

Two teams from the ATLAS Institute were selected to participate in Catalyze CU, a highly selective, summer-long startup accelerator that combines world-class mentorship, funding and dedicated co-working space.

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ATLAS PhD students compete for NVC 14 "Audience Choice Award"

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 16:26:21 +0000

ATLAS PhD students compete for NVC 14 "Audience Choice Award" Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/13/2021 - 10:26

Update April 15, 2021: Kailey Shara, ATLAS PhD student and a researcher in the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, won the NVC 14 Audience Choice Award detailed below, adding $1,000 to the $11,000 she has raised for her startup, Chembotix, over the last month.

On April 13, vote for your favorite startup, including two teams headed by ATLAS PhD students, during the culmination of the New Venture Challenge 14 season at CU �鶹ӰԺ's NVC Championships! The winner will take home a $1,000 "Audience Choice Award."

Kailey Shara, ATLAS PhD student and a member of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and Darren Sholes, ATLAS PhD student and a member of the ACME Lab, will compete along with others for the Audience Choice Award. Both Shara and Sholes won highly competitive NVC14 awards recently, with Shara taking home $5,000 during the New Venture Challenge 14 Female Founder Prize after presenting her research, Chembotix, a robotic automation platform to dramatically speed up chemistry research and development. Sholes won first place in NVC's newcomer competition, walking away with $5,000 for LoopSketch, a program that makes it possible for musicians to remotely collaborate.

During the online event, six other finalists will also pitch their business ideas online to a panel of judges and an audience for the opportunity to win more than $100,000 in prizes. To make it to the NVC 14 Championships (NVC skipped 13 for superstition's sake), the six startup finalists competed in two previous competition rounds against more than 110 ventures that took part in this year's program.

ATLAS students who have successfully competed in past NVCs include the EdBoard Technologies team co-led by Cody Candler, MS-CTD '20, and Ruhan Yang, MS-CTD student, winning fourth place and taking home $12,500 in NVC 12. Ted Thayer, MS-CTD student, and two team members won fourth place and $7,500 at the NVC 11.

For 13 years, the NVC has been CU �鶹ӰԺ’s premier, cross-campus entrepreneurial program and competition, giving aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to build a startup through outstanding support and mentorship. Participants represent majors and departments from across the university. From undergraduates to graduates, PhD candidates to postdocs, and faculty to staff, everyone is invited to pitch their idea or watch and support.

Register Now to watch the NVC 14 Championships!

When: Tuesday, April 13 at 5:30 p.m.
Where: via Zoom

On April 13, the audience of the New Venture Challenge 14 will vote for their favorite startup, including two teams headed by ATLAS PhD students, with the winner taking home a $1,000 "Audience Choice Award."

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ATLAS PhD Student Darren Sholes takes first place at NVC 14 Newcomer Prize Night, winning $5,000

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 22:46:27 +0000

ATLAS PhD Student Darren Sholes takes first place at NVC 14 Newcomer Prize Night, winning $5,000 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 16:46

[video:https://vimeo.com/525809774]

Darren Sholes, ATLAS PhD student and a member of the ACME Lab, pitched LoopSketch to judges during CU �鶹ӰԺ’s New Venture Challenge 14 Prize Night on March 17, winning first place in the newcomer competition (event video here), which comes with $5,000 in funding. In addition, the team advances to the next round where they will compete for additional awards.

Restrictions during the pandemic have made it difficult for musicians to make music with others because the creative process is often intensely collaborative, and latency, the short unavoidable delays that are part of remote information transmission, make digital communication technologies a poor substitute for working together in person, Sholes says.

“LoopSketch’s software program is designed for collaborative music-making,” he says. “It focuses on group flow and brainstorming, allowing for a remote experience that feels more like an in-person jam session.”

The program makes it possible for musicians in different locations to collaborate and quickly build rich, multilayered recordings. For example, a drummer in New York City could use LoopSketch to share a short recording with two friends in California and Oregon. The friend in California then composes an accompanying guitar track and their buddy in Oregon, who plays the bass, can listen to the combined tracks and add his own layer.

Sholes explains that the power of LoopSketch lies in the simplicity of the design. Users record short loops of music that are shared among friends who progressively build a song layer by layer, section by section. The software modulates playback so loops stay in sync with each other, empowering users to focus on playing the music, not managing the session.

The short video above explains the technology in more depth.

Darren Sholes, an ATLAS PhD student and a member of the ACME Lab, won first place in NVC's newcomer competition and walking away with $5,000 for LoopSketch, a program that makes it possible for musicians to remotely collaborate.

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AR Drum Circle research envisions enjoyable remote jamming experiences despite latency

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 22:33:18 +0000

AR Drum Circle research envisions enjoyable remote jamming experiences despite latency Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/13/2021 - 15:33

Long before the pandemic sent people scrambling into isolation, musicians have longed to jam virtually with others across the globe. Now researchers from CU �鶹ӰԺ’s ATLAS Institute’s ACME Lab and Ericsson Research are developing ways for musicians to play together remotely through the AR Drum Circle project.

The difficulty with online jamming has always been latency, the tiny delay that occurs when data is transmitted from one point to the next, says Torin Hopkins, an ATLAS PhD student who leads the ATLAS team. Video conferencing participants don’t detect the delay because they generally take turns when speaking, but any lag greater than 20 milliseconds makes synchronous singing or performing unworkable, he says.

“There’s no room for delay in musical collaborations,” says Hopkins, adding that the virtual choir videos popular during the pandemic were mixed in post production. “Yet real-time music-making with zero lag and a consistent video stream currently doesn’t exist.”

In the AR Drum Circle project, ATLAS researchers and Ericsson project collaborators are exploring ways in which remote drumming experiences can be made more enjoyable despite the latency, says Colin Soguero, the project’s app developer and an undergraduate student studying Creative Technology & Design.

“Latency is one of the biggest issues with remote collaboration, and it can be very frustrating for musicians who rely so heavily on precise coordination,” he says.

Jamming with Avatars
Some of AR Drum Circle’s research focuses on avatars, computer-generated figures that in this case replicate the actions of real drummers participating remotely in drum circles. The avatars appear in another musician’s surroundings using augmented reality (AR), a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world.

Using the AR Drum Circle application, Musician A prints a QR code and places it to position Musician B’s avatar in the augmented reality view. Musician A’s Android cell phone runs the application, and displays B’s avatar where the coded picture was placed. Musician B does the same. When either musician strikes a drum pad connected to their computers, the computers send that information through the internet, the corresponding avatar drummer then strikes its drum, and a drum beat is heard in both locations. The technology employs a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) controller, which, when one drummer strikes their drum pad, sends information to their computer, which then sends the data over the internet to the other drummers’ locations.

While live video of the drumming partners might be best, using avatars mediates the perception of the latency and—potentially—provides visual and audio information for a more satisfying musical exchange, Hopkins says. It takes just small bits of data to trigger an avatar's hand to move, whereas rendering videos requires large amounts of data to transmit every pixel of the moving images.

Adding to this, the core idea of this project is not merely collaboration, but how to minimize or leverage the effects of the inevitable latency and jitter (the deviation from true periodicity of a presumably periodic signal) in order to make collaborations that are highly sensitive to timing more successful or fun, says Mark Gross, professor of computer science, ATLAS director and a member of the project’s advisory team.

“Latency cannot be avoided, but its effects can be mitigated by being clever in portraying avatars and by anticipating future actions,” Gross says.

Sending the drum pad information over the internet to a receiving computer is “incredibly complex,” Hopkins adds. The data travels a long journey and encounters many checkpoints along the way, and small packets of information travel much faster across the network than video with sound. Because the avatar's motion needs to be realistic, complex information is kept on the receiving device and only “start animation” messages are sent over the internet.

Enjoying the experience
Just watching and hearing an avatar strike a drum doesn’t provide adequate information for remote drummers to synchronize, says Ellen Do, professor of computer science with ATLAS, who also participates in several drum circles. Drummers often use gestures, such as head motions and eye contact, to indicate part changes, turn taking and solos, she says. They also use striking force to control volume and hand position to control the timbre; they need to recognize the patterns of the rhythms (e.g., focusing on the down beats, space in-between the beats, the speed, embellishments, harmony, etc.) to play with others, she says.

A large part of the team’s research focuses on determining which of those gestures and expressive features might help remote drummers feel immersed in the collaborative musical experience and experience the enjoyment of feeling connected with each other, she says.

Hopkins, who plays guitar, piano, ukulele, bass, and drums, as well as sings, has missed jamming with other musicians during the pandemic.

“Meeting new people, sharing new ideas and the audiences– those are the things that I really, really miss,” Hopkins says. “Part of the project is figuring out how to incorporate that. Every time I hit the drum, is that enough to make you feel like I’m listening to you? That you feel connected, and that we feel in-sync with each other?”

Connecting in an isolated world

Over time the researchers plan to expand the study to include different types of musical jams, such as including more drummers, musicians playing different instruments, and even dancers that would interact with drummers, as might happen in a physically co-located drum circle, says Do.

Soguero adds that the researchers are also exploring looping, which allows a player to record a drum beat and play it back later, as well as pseudo-haptics, visual effects created in a virtual environment that trick the brain to believe that it’s receiving information about touch and feel.

Regardless of the pandemic, connecting with people who are geographically distant allows for rich, connected, experiences with others who have a variety of talents, come from different cultures and have different perspectives, Hopkins says.

Lessons learned from the AR Drum Circle study about human-human communication, or human-agent communication (with an avatar, agent or robot) could also possibly inform other computer-supported collaborative work scenarios, such as remotely collaborating in medical procedures or auto-repairs, Do says.

“Our research raises the question, ‘Why collaborative musical experiences?’ ” says Hopkins. “Are we doing it to enjoy the company of others or because we enjoy music? How much can you strip away from either experience before you realize they are so intimately connected that designing for collaboration or musical expression alone feels disingenuous?

“Therefore, when designing the AR Drum Circle application, we focus on player-centered design strategies. Maximizing play, given the constraints of the mediating technology (augmented reality) and activity (drum circles), enables the players to feel a sense of contribution in a musical collective, giving us a much needed sense of connection in an isolated world.”

AR Drum Circle's ATLAS Team: Torin Hopkins, ATLAS PhD student, is the project manager; Darren Sholes, ATLAS PhD student, is the technical lead/network engineer; Peter Gyory, ATLAS PhD student, was the former technical lead; Hooman Hedayati, PhD student in computer science, is the project's network engineer and advisor for human-robot (avatar) interaction; and Colin Soguero, an undergraduate student studying Creative Technology & Design, is the app developer. The advisory team consists of Mark D. Gross, ATLAS director and professor of computer science; Ellen Do, ATLAS and computer science professor; Amy Banic, associate professor of computer science at the University of Wyoming and visiting ATLAS professor; and Dan Szafir, ATLAS and computer science assistant professor.

Ericsson Research Project Collaborators: Amir Gomroki, head for 5G, North America; Héctor Caltenco, senior researcher; Per-Erik Brodin, research engineer; Ali El Essaili, senior research engineer; Chris Phillips, master researcher; Alvin Jude Hari Haran, senior researcher; Per Karlsson, director, media technology research at Ericsson and head of Ericsson Research in Silicon Valley; Gunilla Berndtsson, senior researcher at Ericsson Research, Media Technologies.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7PhJRmLt1w&feature=youtu.be]

ATLAS researchers and Ericsson Research project collaborators are exploring ways in which remote drumming experiences can be made more enjoyable despite the latency, including drumming with avatars.

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