“The UPV, the best university in Spain in teaching, second in innovation and technological development and third in the global classification”
Regarding teaching, indicate the progressive hardening of the criteria for assigning the teaching load (POD), always upwards. This year the 10% of teacher follow-up or the reduction by address of thesis that has gone from 3-2-1 to 2-1-1 has been eliminated (it will not be applied retroactively, that is, it does not affect the theses to consider for the POD 2019-2020). Regarding the investigation, mention the constant difficulty to obtain financing, the excessive bureaucracy, the slowness in the administration and all the difficulties associated with the request and justification of projects. At this point, I dare to comment on the case of a project financed by the National Research Plan, which ended in 2012, in 2017 the required justification for expenses was corrected and as of today no answer has been received.
It has been more than 6 years since the project ended and the expenses that the administration does not consider justified will have to be returned with interest and charged to a cost center of the principal investigator. These types of situations are totally unfair and in front of them we are defenseless.
I have been part of the ai2 Institute for more than 10 years. First of all, to thank all the people who have facilitated my work in it and, especially, to all the people who have worked with me. In this editorial I will review the investigations in which I participated during this time. After my incorporation into the institute, the first project granted with national funding was APRENDRA. Which has been followed by others, CHILDMNEMOS and AR3Senses, as well as other projects funded by the Generalitat Valenciana, the University itself or agreements with companies. I have also participated as a researcher in other projects funded at European level.
Mari Carmen Juan, researcher at ai2 Institute
As a result of this research, I would highlight the numerous publications in journals indexed in JCR. It has also contributed to the dissemination of the potential of the applications developed. For example, to allude to my participation in several of the days organized by the ai2 Institute or the press appearances, for example, the latest news about the first app developed in AR3Senses in March-April 2019.
The link between most of my research has been centered around augmented reality. Augmented reality is a technology that allows increasing the information that reaches the user from the real environment. This increase can involve several senses, although the sense used mainly is sight, followed by hearing. Below, I will list some of the applications of augmented reality developed in the last 10 years: to know animals in danger of extinction; learn to spell; learn to recycle; know food, animals and monuments of the world; learn history; dental learning; learn brain structures; therapeutic education in diabetes; learn numismatics; and apps to evaluate spatial memory. We see examples of some of them in the following image:
I would like to highlight the app to evaluate spatial memory. In AR3Senses we have developed an augmented reality app based on SLAM to evaluate spatial memory. Spatial memory refers to the ability to store and recall representations of spatial stimuli. These stimuli can be visual, auditory or otherwise. The fundamental difference of this app with respect to others is that it can be used in any environment and you do not have to add elements to the scene. The app consists of basically two phases.
In the first one, the evaluator travels around the environment using the mobile device and the mesh associated with it is stored in the mobile. The evaluator places the virtual objects in the desired place in the real environment. In the second phase, the user has to carry out the tasks of memorization and evaluation. In the memorization task, the user goes through the real environment, virtual objects appear in it, and he has to memorize the location of the virtual objects in the real environment.
In the evaluation task, the user retraces the environment and must correctly place the objects displayed in the previous task. The main advantage of this app is that it does not require adding elements to the scene (eg, markers or images) and can be used in any environment, small (one room) or large (two floors of a building) . The objects to be used are selected by the evaluator. The app is fully customizable. Each time it is used, it is possible to select the environment, the number of objects and the objects to be used, which allows levels to be established at the choice of the evaluator.
The members of the AR3Senses project believe that this app has many possibilities, including evaluation, training and learning. In evaluation it could be used for the identification of alterations in spatial memory, for example, the early detection of atypical development problems in children. As a training tool, it could be used for training of spatial memory in different groups, for example, patients with dementia, provided that the phase of the disease allows the use of this type of applications.
I will also mention that, currently and for two years, I am part of the C12 Accreditation Commission. Computer Engineering for accreditation to TU and CU. Position that I face with enthusiasm.
Finally, I firmly believe in the potential of augmented reality to help in many fields, including psychology and learning. I hope to continue working on them and that with my bit of sand the ai2 Institute, the DSIC and the UPV continue to grow.