CAMERA awarded £10 million for interactive and visual computing research

The University of Bath is thrilled to announce that CAMERA, the Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications, has been awarded over £10m to fund its research in Intelligent Interactive and Visual Computing until 2026.

Support comes from EPSRC’s Next Stage Digital Economy Centre Programme as well as from 26 partners across the creative industries, sport, healthcare and engineering. This will base fund multi-disciplinary research that fuses visual computing, AI and human-computer interaction (HCI) with healthcare, rehabilitation and biomechanics.

As well as first class research, CAMERA 2.0 will have a strong focus on developing people, bridging the gap between postgraduate researchers and established academics.

Building on the University’s two EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training in Accountable, Responsible and Transparent AI (ART-AI) and Digital Entertainment (CDE), CAMERA 2.0 will also provide a career route from PhD to postdoctoral academic and industrial positions, leading to real impact with our partners and professional training in core areas and new applied directions.

Every project in CAMERA 2.0 will be co-created with its partners and be multi-disciplinary, integrating multiple themes and research disciplines. This will allow researchers to address problems impossible to achieve within one discipline alone.

Of CAMERA’s 27 partners, 21 are industry facing: Atkins, Adlens, Foundry, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Sony, Synthesia, Happy Finish, Ninja Theory, Cubic Motion, Cognisess, Royal United Hospitals Bath, The Ministry of Defence (MoD), Qualisys, Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), British Athletics, British Bobsleigh & Skeleton Association (BBSA), Living With, BMT, Anthropics, ImmerseUK and Digital Catapult.

In addition, CAMERA has 6 partnerships with international research institutes: Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbruken (MPI); Zhejiang Lab, Tsinghua University; University of Auckland; National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, and VISTA (York University).

Professor Darren Cosker, CAMERA Director said: “This further core funding is great news for CAMERA, and testament to all the hard work and success of our team over the last five years.

“Since 2015, we have expanded to over 50 academics and researchers, delivering impacts across the creative industries, health and sport.

“As we look to the next five years, we are excited to be given the opportunity to build on our work in these areas with a great group of new partners and making use of our new expanded facilities at The Bottle Yard Studios.”

Professor Ian White, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bath, said: “I would like to congratulate the CAMERA team on this much deserved success.

“In the five years since CAMERA was launched, it has firmly established itself as a leader for digital media technologies, collaborating with industry and academia to develop innovative solutions to challenges in healthcare, entertainment and assistive technologies.

“It has been a wonderful success story and I look forward to seeing CAMERA grow further thanks to this latest round of funding.”

CAMERA 2.0 is one of six new research centres funded by UKRI across the UK that will pioneer world-leading research to help people grasp the possibilities of the digital revolution, while addressing key challenges to their online safety and privacy.

One of the other centres is REPHRAIN – Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online. The consortium, which includes researchers at Bath, will aim to help protect people from online harm.

Minister for Digital and Culture Caroline Dinenage said: “The UK’s world-renowned universities and fast-growing safety tech sector are coming up with answers to the important questions of the digital age – around privacy, security and online wellbeing.

“With this investment we are supporting organisations to build trust in the technology of tomorrow so people and businesses can use it to improve their lives and boost the economy.”

Minister for Science, Research and Innovation Amanda Solloway said: “We rely on technology for so many things in our lives – from paying our bills and buying our weekly food shop to tackling climate change and finding new treatments for diseases. We must continue investing so we can keep pushing the boundaries of technological developments that improve our daily lives and transform industries.

“The six new research centres announced today will support our ambitious scientists and researchers to develop incredible innovations such as strengthening our online safety and delivering virtual education and healthcare, helping to cement the UK as a science superpower.”

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