Published 01.03.10
Gem Stapleton with her co-investigator Aidan Delaney have been awarded an EPSRC grant for their project Sketching Euler Diagrams.
Euler diagrams, of which Venn diagrams are examples, are a popular notation frequently used in information visualization. The proposed research will develop the first techniques for automatically recognizing sketches of Euler diagrams drawn by people. A natural creation method for Euler diagrams is using a pen but no intelligent tool support currently exists for this mode of entry into a computer; at present, an editing tool must be used but, with tablet computers now widely available, sketch-based input is possible. In order to fully support the user, the computer needs to understand the sketch and, for instance, ‘transform’ the sketch into a high quality image (as if drawn using an editing tool such as Microsoft’s Visio). Euler diagrams form the basis of more expressive notations, built by augmenting them with graphs or arrows (or both), for instance. Thus, the research will lay the foundations for the development of sketch recognition technology for syntactically richer notations.
The project forms a new collaboration with the Dr Beryl Plimmer from the University of Auckland. Dr Plimmer is an internationally recognised expert in sketch recognition technologies, with the Brighton Investigators being experts in Euler diagram drawing. The project also involves Nokia Research, who have been collaborating with the Visual Modelling Group at Brighton on the use of Euler diagram based notations for modelling ontologies.
