Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center

牵头机构：卡内基梅隆大学;主要研究者：Takeo Kanade核心合作机构：匹兹堡大学;联合首席研究员：Rory A.库珀附属外展机构：佛罗里达/格鲁吉亚LSAMP，霍华德大学，林肯大学的生活质量技术工程研究中心（QoLT ERC）将改变生活在一个大的和不断增长的部分人口-人们的功能能力下降，由于老化或残疾。未来的富有同情心的智能QoLT系统，无论是个人设备还是技术嵌入式环境，都将监控并与人沟通，了解日常需求和任务，并通过补偿和替代减少的能力来提供可靠和愉快接受的帮助。QoLT ERC将创建科学和工程知识库，使以人为本的智能系统的系统开发，与人共同存在和工作，特别是有缺陷的人。这些QoLT系统可以是人携带或穿戴的个体设备、人乘坐或陪伴人的移动性系统、仪表化的环境或这些的组合。QoLT ERC研究将建立在智能系统技术的最新进展基础上，包括机器感知、机器人技术、学习、通信和小型化，其中许多技术已经创建并应用于工业、军事和娱乐领域。QoLT ERC将改变这些进步，并开发新技术来感知，推理和影响人们改善他们的生活。以前许多使用复杂技术来增强残疾人功能的尝试都失败了。这些失败的原因之一是对残疾人的了解有限，缺乏技术和临床专业知识与用户需求的紧密结合。QoLT ERC将通过卡内基梅隆大学和匹兹堡大学在四个重点领域的合作来克服这些障碍：监控建模，移动操作，人机界面和人社会，并在整个设计，开发，测试和部署阶段与用户组密切合作。该团队在智能系统、康复工程和相关临床领域拥有技术优势，并有足够的机会接触真实世界的测试平台。更广泛的影响：QoLT ERC开发的技术将使残疾人能够独立进行日常生活活动。通过恢复和保持独立，他们可以追求个人目标，更充分地参与社会。让更多的人获得有报酬的就业，减少机构化的需要或推迟机构化的开始，将对国民经济产生最终影响。 QoLT ERC将在两个方面扩大有才华的学生群体：工程专业学生群体，他们拥有大量的临床和社会经济培训和经验，这将激励他们创造提高生活质量的技术;以及临床导向的学生群体，他们拥有工程培训和经验，这将帮助他们了解如何最好地将技术融入他们的实践。它还将教学生如何有效地合作 这是在开发和实施供人们使用的系统方面最受认可但又难以克服的挑战之一。事实上，我们的ERC团队包括大量的女教师和残疾教师将对多样性产生重大影响。他们作为榜样，并鼓励妇女和残疾人广泛参与ERC作为教师，学生，顾问和客户。QoLT ERC行业联盟的成员包括涉及日常生活各个方面的广泛公司：医疗设备，辅助技术，信息技术，消费电子，医疗保健和保险。QoLT ERC将促进一个技术先进的大型行业，最终将帮助我们所有人更有能力，更有洞察力和更聪明地运作。

Lead Institution: Carnegie Mellon University; Principal Investigator: Takeo KanadeCore Partner Institution: University of Pittsburgh; Co-Principal Investigator: Rory A. CooperAffiliated Outreach Institutions: Florida/Georgia LSAMP, Howard Univ., Lincoln Univ.The Quality of Life Technologies Engineering Research Center (QoLT ERC) will transform lives in a large and growing segment of the population - people with reduced functional capabilities due to aging or disability. Future compassionate intelligent QoLT systems, either individual devices or technology-embedded environments, will monitor and communicate with a person, understand daily needs and tasks, and provide reliable and happily-accepted assistance by compensating and substituting for diminished capabilities.Intellectual Merit: The QoLT ERC will create the scientific and engineering knowledge base that enables systematic development of human-centered intelligent systems that co-exist and co-work with people, particularly people with impairments. These QoLT systems may be an individual device that a person carries or wears, a mobility system that a person rides or that accompanies the person, an environment that is instrumented, or a combination of these. The QoLT ERC research will build upon recent advances in intelligent system technologies, including machine perception, robotics, learning, communication, and miniaturization, many of which have been created and applied to date mainly to industry, military, and entertainment. The QoLT ERC will transform these advances and develop new technologies for perceiving, reasoning with, and affecting people improving their lives. Many previous attempts to use sophisticated technology to enhance function for people with disabilities failed. One reason for those failures was a limited understanding of the human with disability and a lack of tight integration of technical and clinical expertise with users' needs. The QoLT ERC will overcome these barriers through partnership of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh in four thrust areas: Monitoring & Modeling, Mobility & Manipulation, Human-System Interface, and Person & Society, and by working closely with user groups throughout design, development, test, and deployment phases. The team has technical strengths in intelligent systems, rehabilitation engineering, and related clinical areas, and ample access to real-world testbeds. Broader Impacts: The technologies that the QoLT ERC develops will enable people with disabilities to independently perform activities of daily living. By restoring and preserving independence they can pursue individual goals and more fully participate in society. To have more people gainfully employed and to reduce the need for or delay the onset of institutionalization will have the ultimate impact on national economy. The QoLT ERC will expand the pools of talented students in two fronts: the pool of engineering students, with substantial clinical and socio-economic training and experiences that will motive them to create technologies for quality of life; and the pool of clinically-oriented students with engineering training and experiences that will help them understand how best to integrate technology into their practices. It will also teach students how to collaborate effectively one of the most recognized and yet difficult-to-overcome challenges in the development and implementation of systems for people's use. The fact that our ERC team includes a significant number of women faculty and faculty with disabilities will have a major impact on diversity. They serve as role models, and encourage extensive participation of women and people with disabilities in the ERC as faculty, students, advisors, and clients. The membership of the QoLT ERC industry consortium includes a wide spectrum of companies pertaining to all aspects of daily life: medical devices, assistive technology, information technology, consumer electronics, healthcare, and insurance. The QoLT ERC will catalyze a large and technologically sophisticated industry sector that ultimately will help all of us to function more capably, perceptively, and intelligently.