bringing it to the people

It's been a hectic couple of days, but very rewarding. Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at the 2008 ACT Intergenerational Forum, an annual community-based forum (ie not a an academic conference) organised and run by PhD students in the general field of ageing research. You'd be forgiven for wondering how the hell my research in computer vision relates to ageing. In a sense, I would like to think my research relates to many things, however, my recent focus has been on how I might be able to adapt my work with insect-inspired vision techniques for navigation to the task of assisting with hazard perception in older drivers. The research out there suggests we do lose some ability to perceive potential hazards as we get older. The forum was a great chance to talk directly with people who might be consumers of such technology, so I got quite a lively array of questions after my talk.

The other consequence of my talk was a little bit of media attention, including a story in ABC News online: Researcher designs insect-inspired navigation system, and a couple of radio interviews, including this one with
ABC News Radio (mp3)

So it has been quite a busy , indeed all-consuming, couple of days. Suddenly thesis writing feels like a bit of an oasis from the madness ... nice to have these distractions occasionally though .. particularly ones that remind you why you're doing this research in the first place.