A milestone event for LARA project took place the 20th of October in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur under the framework of the VSMM 2016 conference organised from 16 to 21 of October 2016. LARA consortium organised and launched a special session titled “LBS Augmented Reality System for Utilities Infrastructure Management” bringing the technology of the LARA system to South East Asia.
A mixed audience of more than 50 local and international researchers, industry representatives and decision makers had the opportunity to learn more about the different technological and innovation aspects of LARA project and discuss potential applications of the technology spanning from cultural heritage to agriculture.
The event was also attended by the Deputy Minister of Science Technology & Innovation of Malaysia, Dr. Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah, who after analysing the Malaysian research and innovation priorities expressed the vivid interest of the ministry to support and adopt systems like LARA in the future.
During the session which was facilitated by members of the LARA consortium an indoor offline demonstration of the system was made, with the participants showing specific interest to the augmented reality module of LARA highly relevant to the conference’s overall theme of virtual systems and multimedia.
Most importantly, close to the end of the session, the market prospect of LARA was discussed as well as the possibility to interlink the final product with a national grant to boost its potential in the South East Asia region.
Within the framework of the VSMM 2016 conference LARA consortium also submitted 2 papers focusing on research results obtained by LARA project which will be available soon by IEEE Xplore digital library.
Participation at the VSMM 2016 conference was also combined with the 6th LARA project meeting.