Coming for this year European Researcher's Night, some people had the opportunity to have a "date" with our researchers. On the 27th September night a speed-dating activity happened, where the audience had a limited time to ask some questions to the researchers. Inspired in the original speed-dating events, the participants must rotate from table to table, having the chance to understand in real life what the different researchers do.
The event is held simultaneously all over Europe. In Coimbra, it had activities in the Museu da Ciência da Universidade de Coimbra, in Jardim Botânico and in Rómulo – Centro Ciência Viva. The European Researcher's Night aims to get science and citizens closer.
Our research is about Perception and Recognition of Actions and Objects and we could show some examples of tricks that make our brain fill the gaps. Besides the speed-dating, we had some elements of our team in stands with different hands-on activities concerning Illusions such as Ambiguous Figures, Binocular Rivalry images, Change and Inattentional Blindness videos and an Eyetracker for people to play with. The audience engaged in the activities and could answer questions such as "what are optic illusions?", "How is it possible something to cross right in front of us, and miss it?". Finally, the eye tracker was also a success, with people founding very interesting how this technology could track their gaze.
