SBIR PHASE I: Position Sensing to Improve the Interface forAdvice Giving Wearable Computers Used as Cognitive Prosthetics

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段的项目专注于研究开发一种新的更强大的用户界面，用于提供建议，并建立在10年的设计和测试使用定制可穿戴式说话计算机的经验，以帮助有认知障碍的人。将以现有的可穿戴计算机为基础，开发一种位置传感系统，可以经济有效地安装在学校和潜在的工作场所。该研究是基于任务和用户活动模型，主动感知用户位置和大肌肉运动，给出目标导向的建议。使用这些模型应该能够在用户请求之后或感知到用户困难时口头给出建议。在我们的粗大运动领域，我们将能够确定是否需要计算机发出的建议。通过主动感知任务进度，我们将能够在需要建议时提供鼓励，并在初始提示不足时提供更详细的指导。最后，如果我们感觉到危险活动或无法遵循计算机生成的指导，我们将能够自动无线电请求人类监督。这个界面避免了其他主动建议系统在与用户对话时所固有的自然语言理解问题。它将探索从与任务相关的大肌肉运动活动中理解用户需求的领域。应用程序使认知受损的用户能够独立地从事工作，而不是继续受到监护，这对社会很重要。如果负担得起的可穿戴计算机技术和对工作场所的微小修改可以使一个人从一个不满意的看管公共资金的净消费者转变为一个更满意的竞争就业的工资收入者，这显然是一个三赢的局面。社会的胜利在于降低了认知障碍公民的净护理成本，公民对他们的生活更满意，我们公司有一种新的专有产品。

9561143 Friedman This Small Business Innovations Research Phase I project focuses on research to develop a new and more powerful user interface for advice giving and is built on 10 years experience designing and testing the use of custom wearable talking computers for assisting people with cognitive impairments. Based on an existing wearable computer, a position sensing system will be developed that can be cost effectively installed in schools and potential job sites. The research is to actively sense user location and gross motor activity to give goal oriented advice based on task and user activity models. Use of these models should enable giving advice verbally either after a user request or when there is sensed user difficulty. In our domain of gross motion, we will be able to determine whether or not computer originated advice is heeded. By actively sensing task progress, we will be able to offer encouragement when advice is heeded and provide more detailed guidance when initial cues are insufficient. Finally, we will be able to automatically radio for human supervision if we sense dangerous activities or an inability to follow computer generated guidance. This interface avoids the natural language understanding problems inherent in other active advice giving systems that engage in dialog with their users. It will explore the domain of understanding user needs from task related gross motor activities. The application to enable cognitively impaired users to independently hold jobs rather than remain in custodial care is important to society. If affordable wearable computer technology and minor modifications to a worksite can enable a person to change from being a dissatisfied net consumer of public funding in custodial care to a more satisfied wage earner in competitive employment, it is obviously a win-win-win situation. Society wins by decreasing net care costs to cognitively impaired citizens, the citizens are more satisfied with their lives, and our company has a new, pro prietary product.