Autodesk Research to Connect San Francisco and Toronto with SMART Board

"There's a flame in the back of my mind
 And it's burnin' for you all the time
 'Cause I just wanna touch you
 Now I know that you've heard this before
 But with me it could mean something more
 And I just wanna touch you
 So I've said everything that I can
 And I'm hoping that you'll understand
 That I just wanna touch you
 And you want to touch [it] too"
— Utopia, "I Just Want To Touch You," Deface The Music, 1980.

The Office of the CTO includes Autodesk Research. We have Autodesk Research members in our offices at One Market in San Francisco, Pier 9 in San Francisco, and Toronto. The team at One Market sits near where I stand. They are working with a large screen touch device. I have tweeted about it and posted a picture in Instagram.

The large screen is a SMART Board Interactive Panel model 8084i-G4. The board can support 4K display and has an 84” interactive screen. Driving the SMART Board is Windows 8 (for integration with gestures) using an HP Z600 desktop computer with a Nvidia Quatro 5000 card. The team added a Logitec ConfrenceCam CC3000e to the system for videoconferencing use with Microsoft Lync and/or any other conference system.

Autodesk Research has a second system located in Toronto that will be setup in a similar fashion. Their intent is to create a "wormhole" between Toronto and San Francisco that will be "always on" during business hours. The idea is to have both locations work together on research projects.

Principal Engineer, John Schmier noted that the SMART Board has also been a great tool for collaboration with project designs. Research Scientist, Michael Bergin and Senior Director of Design Research, Mark Davis, have been using it daily for design collaboration with the Toronto research team(s).

Touchy collaboration is alive in the lab.