Dhruv Adhia – Hello Universe

Vibrant Gujarat

// February 26th, 2011 // No Comments » // Conference, Gujarat

Let me first take you through facts and figures on what Vibrant Gujarat Summit is and what does it do?

Vibrant Gujarat summit intends to attract investments into Gujarat in all upcoming sectors like IT, agriculture, pharma, and various other industries. This year Narendra Modi made it larger than previous summits by giving chance to small companies like ours Dsign Interactive Systems. And that was true, as Dsign Interactive Systems was amongst the 9 companies selected globally to present at Vibrant Gujarat Summit.

Now that was a unique experience for me as a young entrepreneur and a unique one as well as I don’t have a business background. I met people which otherwise I wouldn’t get chance to meet. It was also a unique experience seating right in the front during inaugural speech of Modi on 10th of Jan, 2011.

Some figures
2003 Global Investors’ Summit – 76 memoranda of understanding (MOUs) worth USD 14 billion were signed.
2005 Global Investors’ Summit – 226 MOUs worth USD 20 billion were signed.
2007 Global Investors’ Summit – 675 MOUs worth USD 152 billion were signed.
2009 Global Investors’ Summit – 8662 MOUs worth USD 241 billion were signed.
20011 Global Investors’ Summit – 7936 MOUs worth USD 462 billion were signed.
(Source wikipedia)

There I met people like Vice President of Asia Shell company. And not to mention many MLA’s with whom I didnt feel like interacting much. It was hard to convey to them what we really do at Dsign. And their behaviour. I rather have a hard way out than to network with such people.

Narendra Modi’s leadership quality is the best I’ve seen so far and he is taking growth of Gujarat to different level. However, does those MLA’s and babu’s work with same ethics and culture as Narendra Modi? That was something I found lacking during the Summit. But again, Vibrant Gujarat summit 2011 was the largest of its kind ever held in India. This year summit attracted more people, more investments and hopefully more awareness and promises made for common man of Gujarat atleast.

It was nice to see how Narendra Modi not only invited people from other countries (Which makes sense from investment POV) but also other states. I liked how he also thought about other states with their interest being in forefront.

Personally, I had wonderful opportunity to meet some of the extraordinary gentlemen out there and the work that they were doing. Dsign got some good offers from companies and organizations in India. Now the ball has been hit back in our court and its our turn to decide what we do with it and how we prioritize our next steps.

In sum, I would encourage young entrepreneurs, innovators to look out for next Vibrant Gujarat Summit. You never know what’s in store for you out there.

Visiting GIR Forest

// February 20th, 2011 // No Comments » // GIR, Gujarat

Year 2011 started like one would have just wished. I visited Gujarat during the month of december 2010 and January 2011 to attend my brothers wedding. Just loved it. For the first time in my life I played Dandya Ras open heartedly without paying any attention to what others might think Afterall it was my brothers wedding and such events are only once a lifetime.

The only way to define ineffable moments is to live them to your fullest. I don’t know but this just came to my mind while writing this blog. Improvisation with thoughts.

After my brothers wedding got over. We had visited GIR forest. The famous ones located near Girnar Mountain (The tallest in Gujarat). Now this in single word just had to be ‘Nostalgic’. Loved watching greenery and might of nature that only nature can define. The most beautiful part is that my cousin sisters stat very close to both GIR forest and Girnar Mountain. They have Ashram called “Prerna Dham” – it means Town of Inspiration Wonderful name isn’t it?
We specifically visited BorDevi Mandir.
Ok without much talk, Ill take you through some photos so you can get glimpse of the journey I had in Junagadh, Gujarat, India

Visiting MIT Media Labs

// January 6th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // antarikShamM, MIT, Technology, Thirdimension

I was recently given opportunity to visit MIT media labs and also present the work
we do at Dsign Labs. Nearly 80 prospective students and several industry guests
are allowed to visit the labs in a year. My visit was for 3.5 days and fortunately I could stay
at Seth Hunters place during my visit. Seth Hunter is 2nd year PHD student for
fluid interfaces group at Media labs.

Structuring of Media labs comes very close to SIAT research labs. The only difference
that I found between SIAT research labs and MIT media labs is that of focus.
While SIAT focuses more on content side, Media labs focuses more on interface side. Their internal
culture amongst faculty and student is similar to GNWC as well. At media labs they have
masters and PHD program in the field of media arts and sciences. That means it is
highly interdisciplinary course. Many of the known programs like processing, scratch,
open frameworks were the work of this lab.

They have several groups which focus on the given set of problems. For example,
Object Based Media group focuses on interface related to various objects in our
day to day life. Tangible media group focuses on everything that is tangible and how
that tangible thing can be used to represent relevant digital information.

Because of Seth Hunter, I got a very good tour of MIT media labs and Boston at large.I actually felt
at home as we do similar work at Dsign labs in the field of machine vision based interfaces.

I primarily met with 3 professors; Henry Holtzman of Information Ecology Group, Pattie
Maes of Fluid Intefaces group and Micheal Boey of Object Based Media Group. And all
were quite impressed with our work at Dsign labs. Some of them found our ways of
reaching out to people through interface a unique approach and strong philosophy.

Along with professors, I met around 15 students and they all spent a good deal of time
to explain me what they had worked on and about their current projects. From them, I came
to know about one more similarity with GNWC and that industry guests and affiliates. They very
much encourage a hacking and practical culture. They often have industry guests visiting and
sponsoring the projects. In this way students are not only able to think in terms of innovation but
also in terms of its usability in the relevant market and commercializing their products.

All in all I found I was back to GNWC and SIAT Research Labs in many ways.

Digital Monalisa – Sensification

// November 9th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // antarikShamM, Biomimicry, Fluid Interfaces, Nature, Networking, opencv, organic media, Technology, Thirdimension, Ubiquitous Computing

At Dsign Interactive labs, I am working on my latest creation, which we call “Monalisa.”
Past few months I worked on various computer vision related algorithms. They were to do with
color, object, tracking, gesture, emotion and speech recognition. There were various other small
algorithms like OCR, image analysis etc.

For Dsign 2.0, I am working on Monalisa software which will eventually combine all such algorithms
with Dsign Framework at the center and utilize it for practical purpose.

My personal intentions out here is not to prove that we are just evolved/programmed/tangible beings.
Its actually the other way round

I personally think that the beauty of AI lies at the application level and not at the conscious or intelligence level.

We at Dsign labs believe that we will create a dent in the universe through our approach of humanizing
interfaces that would better equip with human senses.

The project is under NDA.
But over time I will post some pics and videos as I have more freedom

Peace and lots of love,
Dhruv (Currently in love with Digital Monalisa)

Keynote presentation through Hand Gestures from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.

Law of relativity and Awareness

// September 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // antarikShamM, Thirdimension

Its a wonderful weekend and thought of adding a spiritual topping to start it

Yesterday when I was done with meditation I got this thought.
When we are not aware the knowledge becomes relative by nature as the conscious (chetana) is in the periphery and not in the center. When we are aware of ourselves, knowledge becomes absolute.
When we are aware, we are able to grasp knowledge through conscious(chetana) being in center and we therefore understand the knowledge in its true nature. When we are not conscious
of ourselves, the attention is in the periphery/surface/body/senses. And whatever senses register we get it. However senses do not have “intelligence” i.e. conscious of its own. It is always
changing based on external factors. Therefore it is never still making knowledge relative. Einstein explains it this way

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes.
When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours
that’s relativity.”

To understand truth we have to be aware of ourselves and it is only then we grasp absolute knowledge and not fall into believing that senses are intelligent. Some of the yogis have rightly said about brain and senses. Use brain as means to get to final objective. But don’t consider it a driver. You are the driver not the senses and or brain. To complete the analogy. You : Driver :: Brain/Senses : Car

i.e. you are the driver and brain is the car.

Here is a song by M.C. Yogi called Mahatma’s Message (featuring Sukhawat Ali Khan)                       Click on the link below if you see a cross mark. HTML 5 mp3 player support is only for safari and chrome at the moment.

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Mahatma’s Message (featuring Sukhawat Ali Khan)

Humanizing Technology – An Evolution

// August 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technology, Thirdimension

Recently we at Dsign interactive Systems rolled out first touchless interactive product recommendation system at Pacific Centre in Downtown, Vancouver, Canada.

The system tracks human bodies and hands. It also does noise cancellation based on depth recognition and point cloud readings.

Here is the video

Future refinements,

We are working on creating a new framework which would allow us to easily tweak input as well as output based on client needs. Also for the system to be more intuitive.
We have already been working on natural gestures. Also we trying to work on the fact that user can move in space at a same time cancelling others people noise and making it one to one communication system.
As most of the clients need one to one communication system, however system can support many to one communication system.

An Evolution,

August 15th, 1947 – The day lives forever

// August 13th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // antarikShamM, Freedom, Thirdimension

The independence day. Once again India was free. However the irony is that Mother was always free. But mother cared for her children’s and to see if they were free or not? It is true we the children’s are not free completely. Cause materialistic freedom is not the only one. We are working, thriving , running , thundering towards it while mother India sings lullaby

Who is weak, who is strong, who is right, who is wrong, who is tall, who is short, who is white, who is black, who is who , who is that? is all dissolved when I look into her eyes. It is all gone and what remains is the light, is the energy, is the India thundering as ever, holding, embracing the whole universe. Is my mother India.

The day will live forever

This song goes for you

Millions of reasons,
in every season,
You were there ,
Holding my hand
While I was walking ,
You were holding
And that hold,
was a light, even at night
you made me see stars
not the darkness,
its your brightness
which lives forever,
Oh Mother
August 15th, 1947
the day will live forever
in hearts of every Indian
and the people who felt India
To the breadth and depth of life
she was the symbol of sacrifice
to see her childrens allright
Oh Mother
you take me beyond senses
you gave me something
which is ineffable to describe
No matter where I go
You made me look beyond tribes
You made me look at the light
it was your gift
without which I never had that sight
it was you who was the reason behind my uplift
Oh Mother
the day, 15th of August, 1947
Will live forever!

From,
Your Son
Vande Mataram

FTW coding competition

// July 25th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Games, Thirdimension

My last semesters project along with Manpowers won first student prize for the project “Taxicity”.

Taxicity is the taxi driving mission based game which runs on the real map of Vancouver.

TaxiCity is a game created using Silverlight development kit. The game resources are generated using Open Data from the city of Vancouver. Our team is working with Microsoft Canada and David Eaves to create an engaging and interactive display of freely available/Open Data. The Open Data is used to create the map; Bing Maps acts as a sort of GPS mini-map for the player; and Silverlight is our main platform.

This project is a four month long project at the Centre of Digital Media. Our Client for this project is Microsoft Canada and our mentor for this project is David Eaves.

Game Description:

In the game players will play as a taxi driver in Vancouver, picking up passengers and delivering them to key landmark locations in the city. Real world geometry creates the game map and the route tracking services provided by Bing will be used to guide the player to his/her destination.

Opensource resources that came out with project

You can download the 2d game engine to create silverlight games at http://manpower.codeplex.com/ and other elements of the game and game itself! at http://taxicity.ca/2010/04/download-game-resources/

You can also download a little conversion tool that I wrote in C# to convert from Lat/Long coords to UTM and vice versa.

http://taxicity.ca/2010/03/silverlight-class-for-conversion-from-utm-to-latlong-coords-and-vice-versa/

Generative Art

// July 12th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // antarikShamM, Nature, Technology, Thirdimension

Here is the Generative art that I did for Vancouver Olymics as part of prototyping the concept that our team from GNWC had put forward.

Here is the video

Generative Art from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.

This was one of my part of the prototype for CODE live on the ground, Vancouver Olympics. It was for the Dharma project combining the elements to move from abstract to known as defined in our first brief concept.

I used Mandelbrots recurring equations concept, starting from simple circle which forms out of itself forming a bigger circle as a group of complex circles. I was also trying to capture the concept of stars and universe. Universes(group of circles) moving apart and stars(individual circles) bursting forming into new glowing ones.

How wonderful to see math being involved in this wonderfuly driven dynamically moving art.
Created using processing library inside Eclipse
Music courtesy : Karunesh – Call of the Tribes

And here is some inspiration to take from master himself.

Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals and the art of roughness talk on TED

Organic Interaction

// June 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // antarikShamM, Biomimicry, organic media, Technology, Thirdimension

My pursuit for happiness found in nature continues. I am learning how is it connected to technology or how technology can be tied in the ways nature is? Biomimicry is already on its way. The people at biomimicry institute believe that all the problems that are technical and design challenged are already solved in nature. We just need to know how to translate them to human made technologies. This reminds me of how nature is not just “Nature”, nurturing all of us? Its a intellectual treasure. Answer to most of technical designs are already out there is what I believe too.

For example, let us consider the example of Object Oriented programming in the field of computer science. It consists of 5 things basically,

1) Classes and objects
2) Data encapsulation
3) Data Abstraction
4) Polymorphism
5) Inheritance

All of these are basically found in nature. Everything in nature is in some form of inheritance. Some might have single name but multiple forms. Considering the human body as a form of nature, look how many forms humans have? Infinite?

Also look at the way I interact with daily objects and natural life around me. Its like “I don’t have to think at all”, data abstraction isn’t it? And that’s because everything in nature is encapsulated in the form of objects which has behaviours and properties.

Though, what I wanted to discuss in this post was about what are different aspects of natural interactivity compared to that of today’s cutting edge technology.

Today’s technology, is about seamless interaction which provides information on time. Today’s technology is immersing out like mobile web. Information connected on the go.

But what about nature? For example without the help of any technology, if I plan to go for hiking or travelling across the mountain. It takes effort, adventure, thrilling moments to experience, learn, feel and understand that very interaction. Its result is gradual. Why? I don’t know why. But it reminds me that “Process” is more important than results. I also learn that smiling through struggle = Process

So let us now analyse, what did I learn from that natural interaction. I did not only learn, but also felt which was a bigger learning for me. I learnt about the process and learning about the process. I learnt Struggle is a form of smile . Isn’t that interaction worth while having?

Here is some inspiration to take,