INTEGRATED SENSING: Distributed Architecture for a Voluble Intelligent Environment

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AbstractThe goal of the proposed research is to implement aconversational intelligent environmentcontaining a distributed array of active cameras and other sensors,and communicating with users via natural dialogue, augmented where usefulwith imagery and pointing devices.This artificial spatial intelligence, termed aVoluble Intelligent Environment or VIE, will actively obtain information about,and provide assistance within a real physical domain.The project requires grounding natural language understanding inmachine perception.A major difficulty is that outputs supplied bycurrent perceptual algorithms are too low-levelto serve as primitives for traditional understanding and reasoning systems.To address this, the PIs will integrate the results of machine visionand other perceptual functions into mid-level representations termed"perscripts", which represent items of perceptual information of the sort thatwould typically be described by a phrase or simple sentence.The project also requires advances indistributed systems technology to permit thevarious perceptual, computational, and communication components tobe efficiently and flexibly configured.The integration framework will be based ona prototype distributed resource interface, InterWeave,developed at the University of Rochester.Interweave provides an efficient implementationof a network-wide global name/address space that directly supportsthe proposed approach to grounding language in perception.The work will be validated ina ``Household Assistant'' application that provides occupants of a``smart house'' with information useful in activities ofdaily living (such as ``where did I leave my glasses?'' or``did I take my meds?'').This application is being developed in conjunction with the Universityof Rochester Center for Future Health.It addresses needs ofthe elderly and the disabled, and has the potential to have a significanteconomic impact as part of an overall system that unloads caregivers forthis population.