New Media on Enactive Torch

Our Enactive '07 Oral presentation has been added to the Enactive Torch Website.

Go direct to the Audio stream by clicking here

To view the presented paper: 'Towards a Phenomenological Pragmatics of Enactive Perception' click here

Enactive '07

Recently returned from the Enactive Interfaces / Enaction in Arts conference in Grenoble (France) where me and Tom presented our paper on the Enactive Torch. Met some very interesting people and our work was well recieved.

Also at the conference was Peter Bennet who also studied Cybernetics at Reading with me and Tom.

Enactive Torch Experiments

Experiments are planned for this Friday with the improved Enactive torch.

A logo has also been designed. The left side of the image shows the Braille representation of 'ET'.

Enactive Torch Website

The Enactive Torch now has a dedicated website: www.enactivetorch.wordpress.com

As well as being generally informative the device aims to provide a point of contact for researchers who may be interested in using the enactive torch in their own studies of perception and sensory substitution.

Vicon Motion Capture

Have been looking into the Vicon Motion Capture System I'll be using. Looks like its going to be fun, interesting and then very difficult (if their software doesn't do what we want).

Enactive Torch phase 2

Work on the enactive torch modifications is going well the problem of oscillations between readings now fixed. This has been a consistant problem until now and it still requires some work. In the enactive torch these oscillations have severly impaired the creation of the extra sense as the environment is suddenly uncertain. This is also true in the haptic torch were I was previously informed (by a blind person) that this was a serious bug that would stop them using the system.



I'm hoping to get some trials recorded this weekend but as always the problem lies in somehow getting people to an unfamiliar environment.

Warwick Lecture

Went to see a public lecture by my old boss Kevin Warwick yesteday. As opposed to talking about Robots taking over the world he's now talking about the implant projects and placing mixed raw neural tissue (from unborn rats) onto microelectrode arrays to create biological neural networks. It all sounds very sci-fi and the audience loved it but to be honest neurophysiologists have been doing MEA work like this for decades so I've yet to be sold.


At the end some undergraduates were asking Kevin an implant question which he handed over to me. So now I'm helping these guys with their project (and I thought I'd left the field)

PhD Started

Have started my PhD at The University of Bristol.

It appears that I'll be dividing my time between the Control Lab at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Bristol Robotics Lab.