The ANSWER project consortium includes industrial and academic partners from Belgium, Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom:
Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, Greece (Coordinator)
Digital Film Technology, Germany
Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research, Germany
IT Innovation Centre, UK
Larian Studios, Belgium
STEFI Productions, Greece
ICCS is an institute attached to the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), which is the oldest (founded in 1837) and most prestigious University in Greece with a large involvement and participation in research projects both in a National and European level and with strong national and international industrial ties. ICCS is associated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DECE) of NTUA. The DECE is the most prestigious department in Greece among all schools in all universities. The institute carries research and development activities on diverse aspects of telecommunications systems and techniques, media processing, multimedia technologies and communications, computer vision, adaptive learning, machine intelligence, content-based knowledge mining, content management and manipulation.
The personnel of the ICCS consist of members of the staff of the DECE, research students and fellows of DECE/NTUA. The active research personnel of ICCS presently consist of 80 members of staff of DECE/NTUA, 25 additional senior researchers and 120 research students. Since 1989 ICCS has been extensively involved in the RACE, ESPRIT, BRITE, IST programs supported by the EC, with key involvement in projects including DELOS, SCHEMA, FIDIS, GRIA, GRIDLAB, SCHEMA, MEMPHIS, MKBEEM, OLYMPIC, HPC-Europa, EFTOS, DYNALOG, INNO, EUROMED, POLYMNIA, APn, HPC-Eurora, Humaine, ITACITUS, and many more. It has also participated in numerous National funded research projects and in many industrial development projects.
ICCS is coordinator of the ANSWER project.
Digital Film Technology Weiterstadt GmbH (DFT) provides high-end post production solutions for a variety of commercial media, film and content markets including: film studios, broadcast operations, and post production facilities. DFT products include the Spirit family of film scanners, Shadow Telecine, Scream grain reducer, LUTher color calibration tool, and the Bones digital intermediate (DI) workflow solution.
The entire DFT team is highly regarded within the industry and is dedicated to uncompromising product and technology development, as well as superior sales and support services. Digital Film Technology is headquartered in Weiterstadt, Germany and has regional offices in London, Sydney, Bangkok, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. DFT is independently owned by PARTER Capital Group, a Frankfurt, Germany private equity investment group.
Fraunhofer-IGD (Fraunhofer-Institut fur Graphische Datenverarbeitung) is an institute of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, headed by Prof. Dieter Fellner and located in Darmstadt Germany. Fraunhofer IGD is one of the biggest, best-equipped and most successful groups in the world in the area of computer graphics. Fraunhofer-IGD does applied research with the aim of further developing the technology of computer graphics and of making the results of the new technology available for applications. As a link between academic research and business practice, Fraunhofer IGD contributes considerably to the technology transfer between universities and industry.
The VR activities of the Virtual and Augmented Reality department have lead to the development of a VR system which is now commercialised through the spin-off company VRCom. The most recent focus is to develop solutions in the area of mixed reality, including rendering, virtual humans, artificial life. The department members have developed the InstantPlayer platform, a modular X3D/VRML-system for virtual and augmented reality solutions. They also launched the open-source initiative OpenSG (www.openSG.org) and have developed different advanced industrial applications in the area of digital products.
The IT Innovation Centre is an autonomous science-park-based applied research centre. Part of the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science, we specialise in projects to enable take-up of novel IT, particularly by industry and commerce. We research, develop, architect, engineer and integrate innovative IT systems. We provide consultancy services and deliver strategies, road maps, proofs-of-concept, demonstrators and novel operational systems.
IT Innovation seeks to occupy the niche area between academic research and industrial application in the fields of digital media production, discovery and repurposing, collaborative networks, data management, data mining, data fusion, ontology, SOA, network security and industrial GRIDs. The organisation has collaborated successfully in a wide range of UK and European projects, as well as working with industrial partners on targeted R&D projects. IT Innovation has developed the GRIA middleware (Grids for Industrial Applications) which is now available as open source software and OpenMKS, a semantic search and navigation tool for collections of images, video, 3D models and textual descriptions. IT Innovation has worked in application areas as diverse as broadcasting and multi-media, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, automobile industry, healthcare, banking and defence.
Larian Studios is an award winning computer game developer located in Oudenaarde, Belgium which has released over 30 software products. Products range from classic multimedia productions to arcade cabinets to the international hit "Divine Divinity" (awarded by several magazines as one of the best games of 2002). Larian Studios specialises in developing high profile, high quality games and utilising the technology developed for these games in multimedia productions. The Larian Studios mission can be summarised as: "Our goal is to create vast immersive virtual 3D worlds for a mass audience".
Other big titles in Larian Studios' portfolio are Beyond Divinity, the successor to Divine Divinity & KetnetKick, the world's first PC2TV game which is a smash hit in Belgium (Christmas' 2004 nr 1 PC CDROM title) and was coproduced with VRT, the Flemish national broadcaster. Currently, Larian Studios are working on Divine Divinity 2 and an as of yet unannounced project. The company is strongly technology and innovation driven and has several partnerships with the academic and R&D world.
Vittorio Pietra & Vassilis Katsoufis established STEFI Productions S.A. in 1971. STEFI has since become a leading production company with active presence in the Greek and International market and has also expanded in all aspects of Production, TV Commercial, Motion Picture and Documentary, TV Programs and lately Event Management. In 1999 STEFI Productions extended its activities into the Internet through its affiliate Steficon (www.steficon.gr). STEFI has produced and co-produced, so far, 22 feature films, tens of documentaries, over 6000 commercials and over 300 music videos, for the Greek as well as the international markets. STEFI has also participated in international co-productions and managed many foreign productions in Greece.
STEFI guarantees to produce the highest quality with a concentrated approach to its clients' specific needs. These factors contribute to STEFI's, strong reputation as a progressive, flexible and enterprising production company. It owns complete production facilities, including production offices, a TV studio of 1250m2, 35mm cameras, construction facilities, lighting equipment, grip equipment, transport vans, and props storage. It also employs highly talented artists and technical staff, as demonstrated by the following CVs of the artists who will contribute to ANSWER as domain experts.
STEFI's role in ANSWER is as an end-user and domain expert. Being located geographically very close to ICCS, they will offer very close and regular support to ICCS research staff, most importantly allowing, and assisting, researchers to regularly study real productions throughout the duration of the project.
