EDM Studio Inc. - Access Grid

Popular voice and video conferencing software such as Skype, iChat and MSN Messenger target the massive desktop computer market and the commodity internet. While this is often the ideal solution for family members, friends and colleagues having their own computers, broadband connection, headsets and web cameras, such point-to-point systems don't scale to handle the special needs of large groups of participants.

The Access Grid was conceived to address such issues, facilitating not just communication but also collaboration between groups of researchers. Central to the Access Grid Project is the notion of an AG "node", a custom designed space with multiple projectors forming large display walls, multiple controllable high-resolution cameras, embedded microphones, echo cancellation hardware, server-level computers, and high-bandwidth so-called "multicast enabled" networking.

There are now over 400 such nodes existing in institutions and corporations worldwide, all running the core Access Grid software and various add-ons that permit shared presentations, control over remote devices and instruments, collaborative visualization and more.

Darran Edmundson was been heavily involved in the Access Grid Project for several years:

Designed and constructed the Australian National University's Huxley AG Node
Refereed showcase presentation to the AG stream of the world's premier supercomputer conference, SC Global 2003. The presentation was a demonstration of simple contextual background substitution in Access Grid video.
Along with student Paul Warren, designed and developed AGDeviceControl, an extensible software system for the remote control of Access Grid hardware such as cameras, room lighting, projectors and custom instruments.
As an example of the AGDeviceControl software, built an Access Grid-controllable telepresence robot demo'd at the 2005 AG conference in San Francisco.
Launched the community-driven portal website AG Central
Along with Jason Bell from Central Queensland University, instigated the Australian Access Grid Quality Assurance Program, a twice-yearly regime of strict testing to ensure that all Australian nodes are fully functional.
Given technical talks about Access Grid in Canada, the U.K., Japan and the United States.