Energy and transport are the highest emitters of greenhouse gases in the EU at 25% and 21% respectively of total emissions. Efficient management, conversion and distribution of thermal energy as well as converting excess or wasted heat into electricity presents a major opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve net zero by 2050 in the energy and transport sectors and beyond e.g. heating and cooling distribution in buildings and districts, improved efficiency in renewables and more efficient, longer range electric vehicles. THERMINATOR will develop a new energy conversion technology in the form of an efficient low profile energy conversion “skin” that can be integrated into the fabric of a building or the wall of a pipe to reduce energy loss through active insulation or to provide temperature conversion in heat networks. It could be applied as a backing to improve efficiency of solar cells or integrated into the structure of a vehicle to support passenger comfort or improved efficiency of structural batteries. This novel technology integrates thermoacoustic and electrocaloric stages and operates at high frequency to achieve high power density (100W/cm2). Model-based smart controls and energy management will provide high efficiency and digital control for optimum performance and reliability and integration into digital networks. A focus on sustainability, circularity and socio-economic factors will ensure products with high environmental and social benefit. Developments will be validated to TRL4 by testing in use cases in thermal networks, solar generation and electric vehicle applications. THERMINATOR disruptive technology will support European companies in developing new high performance sustainable products through consortium members in thermal networks and solar power sectors alongside world-leading expertise in electrocaloric, thermoacoustic and ultrasonic technologies and skills in reliability, environmental assessment and exploitation planning.

This proposal is a request for funding as partial support for holding the an International Workshop on Software Testing in the UK called Testing Academia & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART 2007).The workshop will combine industrial and academic participation to strengthen and develop UK leadership in the area of software testing. This event builds upon previous smaller workshops on testing held in the UK. Although it remains a workshop in character, the event's title includes the word `conference' to allowfor future growth. These events have steadily built a strong community of researchers and industrialists and the time is now ripe for this event to mature into a large more ambitious event. Funding is sought from EPSRC to support the event. This funding will be used tosupport the costs of the meeting. As a sign of their serious commitment to this venture, several of the industrial partners have already offered to support the event with a modest (but useful) level of sponsorship.

Driven by the potentials and demands of an increasing global market and fed by advances in information and communication technology, one of the trends in the modern workplace is for more distributed team working. Distributed working has long been a major topic in computer science, but despite excellent work and the development of highly sophisticated computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems, in many situations there is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting. The consequent demands for travel to meetings have immediate short term quality of life and productivity impacts on individuals. There may also be more far-reaching and profound implications of our current reliance on long distance travel. Thus it is still very relevant to try to determine why some CSCW fails and to research possible technologies for expanding the situations for which face to face meetings can be avoided. There are numerous common collaborative scenarios that require a more natural way of interacting across a distance. Specifically we have identified conscious and subconscious communication of attention and emotion as common critical elements that make many such scenarios hard to support without eye-gaze. Eye-gaze is a key interactional resource in collaboration but it is not well supported in today's communication technology. Indeed many have claimed that lack of ability to faithfully represent eye-gaze is the key failing of current CSCW systems. Within today's video based systems eye-gaze can be maintained in some limited way if the user is willing to look directly at a camera, but this is unnecessarily constraining in a social situation, especially during object or environment focussed collaboration.We propose to evaluate the role of eye-gaze in tele-communication so as to better design future communication technologies. To do this we will build the world's first tele-collaboration system that supports two and three way communicational eye-gaze without restricting the gaze direction of participants. We will integrate eye-tracking technologies into Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) displays, and develop the software necessary to build a consistent collaborative virtual environment where each participant can see the other and accurately track their eye-gaze. To prove the utility of this system we will compare it to AccessGrid technology which provides state-of-the-art video conferencing on large wall displays. Although unable to support communicational eye-gaze between moving participants, AccessGrid does offer advantages in terms of placement within working environments and realism of representation. Comparison between the two approaches will provide valuable insight into future development of each. Through a series of experiments we will establish what conditions are necessary and sufficient to support communicational eye-gaze in a tele-communication system; validate the support of eye-gaze in tele-communication by measuring its impact on collaboration; measure the impact of technology approaches and variables; establish when eye-gaze is important; and establish situations where eye-gaze is critical for successful collaboration at a distance.

Driven by the potentials and demands of an increasing global market and fed by advances in information and communication technology, one of the trends in the modern workplace is for more distributed team working. Distributed working has long been a major topic in computer science, but despite excellent work and the development of highly sophisticated computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems, in many situations there is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting. The consequent demands for travel to meetings have immediate short term quality of life and productivity impacts on individuals. There may also be more far-reaching and profound implications of our current reliance on long distance travel. Thus it is still very relevant to try to determine why some CSCW fails and to research possible technologies for expanding the situations for which face to face meetings can be avoided. There are numerous common collaborative scenarios that require a more natural way of interacting across a distance. Specifically we have identified conscious and subconscious communication of attention and emotion as common critical elements that make many such scenarios hard to support without eye-gaze. Eye-gaze is a key interactional resource in collaboration but it is not well supported in today's communication technology. Indeed many have claimed that lack of ability to faithfully represent eye-gaze is the key failing of current CSCW systems. Within today's video based systems eye-gaze can be maintained in some limited way if the user is willing to look directly at a camera, but this is unnecessarily constraining in a social situation, especially during object or environment focussed collaboration.We propose to evaluate the role of eye-gaze in tele-communication so as to better design future communication technologies. To do this we will build the world's first tele-collaboration system that supports two and three way communicational eye-gaze without restricting the gaze direction of participants. We will integrate eye-tracking technologies into Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) displays, and develop the software necessary to build a consistent collaborative virtual environment where each participant can see the other and accurately track their eye-gaze. To prove the utility of this system we will compare it to AccessGrid technology which provides state-of-the-art video conferencing on large wall displays. Although unable to support communicational eye-gaze between moving participants, AccessGrid does offer advantages in terms of placement within working environments and realism of representation. Comparison between the two approaches will provide valuable insight into future development of each. Through a series of experiments we will establish what conditions are necessary and sufficient to support communicational eye-gaze in a tele-communication system; validate the support of eye-gaze in tele-communication by measuring its impact on collaboration; measure the impact of technology approaches and variables; establish when eye-gaze is important; and establish situations where eye-gaze is critical for successful collaboration at a distance.

Driven by the potentials and demands of an increasing global market and fed by advances in information and communication technology, one of the trends in the modern workplace is for more distributed team working. Distributed working has long been a major topic in computer science, but despite excellent work and the development of highly sophisticated computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems, in many situations there is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting. The consequent demands for travel to meetings have immediate short term quality of life and productivity impacts on individuals. There may also be more far-reaching and profound implications of our current reliance on long distance travel. Thus it is still very relevant to try to determine why some CSCW fails and to research possible technologies for expanding the situations for which face to face meetings can be avoided. There are numerous common collaborative scenarios that require a more natural way of interacting across a distance. Specifically we have identified conscious and subconscious communication of attention and emotion as common critical elements that make many such scenarios hard to support without eye-gaze. Eye-gaze is a key interactional resource in collaboration but it is not well supported in today's communication technology. Indeed many have claimed that lack of ability to faithfully represent eye-gaze is the key failing of current CSCW systems. Within today's video based systems eye-gaze can be maintained in some limited way if the user is willing to look directly at a camera, but this is unnecessarily constraining in a social situation, especially during object or environment focussed collaboration.We propose to evaluate the role of eye-gaze in tele-communication so as to better design future communication technologies. To do this we will build the world's first tele-collaboration system that supports two and three way communicational eye-gaze without restricting the gaze direction of participants. We will integrate eye-tracking technologies into Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) displays, and develop the software necessary to build a consistent collaborative virtual environment where each participant can see the other and accurately track their eye-gaze. To prove the utility of this system we will compare it to AccessGrid technology which provides state-of-the-art video conferencing on large wall displays. Although unable to support communicational eye-gaze between moving participants, AccessGrid does offer advantages in terms of placement within working environments and realism of representation. Comparison between the two approaches will provide valuable insight into future development of each. Through a series of experiments we will establish what conditions are necessary and sufficient to support communicational eye-gaze in a tele-communication system; validate the support of eye-gaze in tele-communication by measuring its impact on collaboration; measure the impact of technology approaches and variables; establish when eye-gaze is important; and establish situations where eye-gaze is critical for successful collaboration at a distance.