Open Projects

The list of projects is categorized into several sections, and projects in each section are listed in rough order of desirability. If you're interested in any of these projects, please mail a text-only resume (not Word! to ccg-projects.

For an illustration of the various themes presented here, please have a look at the Georgia Tech Innovations page and the DARPA AMI scenario page..

• Wearable Tools for Conversations
  • Serendipitious speech agents Agents that will listen to your side of conversations with other people for various key phrases in your speech and take action.
    • (uroc,8903) Assistant emailing Listen for key phrases such as "my assistant Bob can take care of that" or "my student Ann should know that". The agent will then take the segments of audio that follow and mail them to the person mentioned. The recipient could then listen to the audio or jump through it with a tool like ScanMail.
    • (uroc,8903) Person identification Listen for key phrases such as "Nice to meet you, Dr. Starner." The agent will then attempt to find information on your wearable or the web about the mentioned person.
    • (uroc,8903) Idea and contact capture Listen for key phrases such as "Let me see if I understand this..." or "Let me repeat that number back to you..." and record the subsequent audio for later perusal.
    • (7001,8903) Command capture/display Military and emergency radio transmissions often follow a protocol, or script, such as "This is J72A calling N47B", "This is N47B, go ahead". This agent would listen for these key phrases and display a command map that others could use to replay orders or other information without having to search huge sections of audio.
    • (uroc) How do I spell this? Pick up speech such as "how do I spell serendipitious?" and display the correct spelling. Bias the speech recognition towards difficult-to-spell words.
  • (uroc,7001) Wearable microphones and privacy Create and evaulate a wearable microphone that preserves other's privacy. This could be done by energy-based filtering (remove audio that's too low volume) or by using multiple microphones (such as one near the mouth and one on the arm).
• Computerized diary interfaces and capture
  • (8903,uroc) Comic ReLife Create a system that summarizes the wearable user's experiences in the form of a comic. An example of this is ComicDiary from ATR, Japan.
  • (uroc,8903) RA/Association Engine Create (or adapt) an Association Engine like the Remembrance Agent or the Dashboard to work with some of the other ideas on this page.
  • (uroc,8903) Powerpoint presentation capture Take a webcam or digital camera and set it on the table at a presentation and periodically take pictures of the slides. Then automatically de-warp the image and perhaps perform OCR and rebuild the original presentation.
  • (uroc,8903) Wearable pan/tilt/zoom camera Find or make a pan/tilt/zoom camera and mount that can be worn. Possibly develop software to do interesting things like tracking. See this paper.
• Context tools
  • (8903,uroc) Anywhere context-based tab completion Use the X input method protocol (XIMP) or something similar to make tab-completion that works anywhere. For example, if the user starts typing "super..." the system could offer completion suggestions such as "superluminous" and "supercilious" that could be used by pushing the tab key. This would be similar to foreign-language (like Japanese) input under X, but the suggestions would vary based on the application. This might be a good place to start.
• Wearable keyboard studies These studies mostly involve the Twiddler chording keyboard used with wearable computers.
  • (uroc,7001,8903) Macro finding The Twiddler allows the user to set certain key combinations to macros such as "ing", "the", "ion", "and" and so on. Determine if there are more macros that should be created by analyzing n-gram frequencies in text and a theoretical model of how chording keyboards work.
  • (7001,8903) Maximum typing speed Develop and test a theoretical model of the maximum acheviable typing speed on the Twiddler and various other portable keyboards.
  • (7001,8903) Smart tutor study Study the effect of a smart typing tutor for the Twiddler on learning rates. Also study the effect of auto or tab completion.
• Gesture Toolkit These studies involve the Gesture Toolkit, a program designed to make various types of gesture recognition easy.
  • (uroc) Eye tracking Manufacure cameras to track a user's eyes for blink-gesturing, based on schematics and software we have.
  • (uroc) Wheelchair control Interface the gesture panel (a gesture-sensing surface) to the control system of an electric wheelchair.
  • (uroc) Gesture Panel demo Create a permanent demonstration installation of the Gesture Panel in the Aware Home.
  • (uroc) BlinkI demo Create a permanent demonstration installation of the BlinkI system (a blink-based gesture system) in the Aware Home.
  • (uroc,8903) Driving simulator Create a driving simulator to test the Gesture Panel in lifelike driving situations.
• Innovative speech recognition
  (uroc) Speech recognition with Victor-Borge like sounds for programming (instead of "left bracket" make pop! sound).
• Wearable user interfaces
  • (uroc) Reading systems for small displays, such as RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation).
  • (uroc) Adapt a mini-qwerty keyboard for wearable use and perform typing speed study.
  • (uroc,7001,8903) Create a zoomable interface for wearables. This would involve mapping windows in the window manager onto a sphere that could be zoomed in and out. OpenGL skills a plus!
• Miscellaneous stuff
  • (uroc) Create a automatic battery load tester, similar to this NiMH-based one.

For historical interest, here is the old project ideas page.