Headstart 2007

About Headstart at Lancaster University

Headstart at Lancaster provides an insight for year 12 students into the increasingly inter-disciplinary nature of contemporary computer systems through the exciting world of ubiquitous computing.

Headstart at Lancaster grapples with what the reality of ubiquitous and pervasive computing means for society, and develops this into a fresh look at what will be required of tomorrow's computer scientists and engineers. Specifically, new technologists will need the vision, creativity, and specialised skills to design systems made up of many different types of devices which communicate with one another to detect, interpret, and respond to the real world, and which can interact with a variety of users.

Ubiquitous Computing: An innovative method of interacting with multi media equipment

Ubiquitous computing

Ubiquitous Computing is often viewed as the third generation of computer systems from many users/one computer (the mainframe model of the 1960s and 1970s) through one user/one computer (the PC model of the 1980s and early 1990s) to one user/many computers where computers are everywhere and disappear into the environment (the present day).

This technology is applied in a variety of settings including the intelligent office or home, wearable computers or monitoring and management of the natural environment.

In a ubiquitous system, small computing devices work together to sense, interpret, and respond appropriately to people's actions and changes in the environment. Current, everyday examples of such systems range from climate control for an office building, to a massively multiplayer online game played between users of mobile phones.

Research at Lancaster

Ubiquitous and Mobile computing is one of the key research themes at Lancaster University. Please click here for an overview of the types of research Lancaster carries out in this field.

Course objectives

The Headstart course at Lancaster is centered around a design project in which teams work to create and program an embedded device which takes sensory input from the real world and analyses it to create an appropriate response using actuators (e.g. lights and motors).

In parallel, hands-on workshops and informal lectures will look closer at the underlying technologies and their implications; examples include sensors, wireless communication, and aspects of human interaction.

The course at Lancaster includes the following key elements:

• an integrative design project where students will investigate and build prototype applications which in some way detect (using sensors), interpret (using algorithms) or respond (using actuators such as displays or motors) to human needs
• a series of hands-on workshops which give the student the needed practical skills to realise their project prototypes; workshop topics will cover sensing hardware fundamentals, computer programming for ubiquitous systems, and user-centric application design
• a range of inter-disciplinary informal seminars which are meant to spark discussion and aid in project brainstorming by exposing students to the concepts and challenges for cutting-edge ubiquitous computing, including: embedded sensing; "smart" appliances; distributed system organisation; usability; and cognitive models to help us understand how humans accept, comprehend, and interact with these Ubiquitous Computer systems.

This course will appeal to students who are excited by a new range of applications of modern IT and who would be stimulated by a broad, inter-disciplinary view of such systems.

Microsoft Research Sponsorship

We are pleased to announce that Microsoft Research is providing sponsorship for Headstart at Lancaster University 2007