SGER: Prototype Accessible Aquarium: Exploration of Advanced Bio-Tracking and Adaptive Sonification Infrastructure

博物馆、科学中心、动物园和水族馆都在教育和娱乐来访的公众。然而，随着这些机构努力使残疾人更容易接近，它们必须找到方法来容纳日益多样化的游客群体，他们具有不同的身体和感官需求。例如，主要依靠展品的视觉体验来促进教育和娱乐目标的设施往往发现，让数百万盲人或视障人士能够有意义地参与其中是一件具有挑战性的事情。当展品是动态的时，问题就变得复杂起来，因为对于缺乏正常视力的人来说，移动和变化往往很难描述，互动也很难负担。水族馆里的鱼的行为，动物园栖息地里黑猩猩或幼狮的玩耍，以及科学中心里行星的宇宙舞蹈？太阳系的S模型都是动态展品的例子，到目前为止，视力障碍的游客还无法接触到这些展品。无障碍水族馆项目的PI的最终目标是通过使用创新的跟踪和音频技术提供实时解说，使这些动态展品对视力障碍的参观者来说是可访问和吸引人的。PI和他的团队希望最终开发出尖端的生物跟踪和行为分析技术，为复杂、信息丰富和引人注目的多媒体听觉显示和发声(用于向听众传达有关某种数据的信息的声音)提供输入。实际上，水族馆中的每个展品都是动态的；此外，这些展品的水生性质给使用典型的传感技术和跟踪技术带来了独特和有趣的挑战。因此，该项目需要相当大的创新和新的科学才能成功。在这个探索性项目中，PI将组装一个端到端的概念验证系统，其中包括一个有活鱼的研究水族馆，一个基于相机的生物跟踪系统，一个算法音乐生成系统，以及一个供用户与所产生的音频服务交互的方法/界面。跟踪和发声算法将被开发和集成，这样鱼的运动就可以用来产生音乐和其他音频注释。由此产生的音频输出将被呈现给一系列视力和视障参与者，并将收集客观表现和主观数据。迭代的设计-评估-重新设计过程将使PI能够快速有效地改进基本系统，并提供坚实的概念证明。这将导致一个完整的研究平台，稍后可以用于在所有组成领域进行更深入的研究。该项目将吸收社区中不同群体的研究人员、学生和专家成员的努力才华，并从中获得灵感，其中包括大量视觉障碍者。广泛的影响：该项目将促进生物跟踪、行为分析、发声、听觉显示和计算机音乐方面的知识。虽然这些进步在各自的领域都很重要，但这些不同领域的进步的协同作用将为视力障碍者打开一个全新的世界：动态水上环境的复杂自然编排。这一发现不仅适用于水族馆，也适用于动物园和博物馆等其他类型的设施，也适用于其他群体，如老年人或行动不便、身高或其他问题导致难以看到传统标志的人。事实上，所有参观者都将受益于音频增强，使他们能够了解展品，同时将视觉注意力保持在展品本身上。

Museums, science centers, zoos, and aquaria are in the business of educating and entertaining the visiting public. However, as such institutions strive to become more accessible to people with disabilities, they must find ways to accommodate an increasingly diverse visitor population with varying physical and sensory needs. Facilities that rely primarily on the visual experiences of their exhibits to promote educational and entertainment goals, for example, often find it challenging to enable meaningful participation by the millions of people who are blind or visually impaired. When exhibits are dynamic the problems are compounded, as movements and changes are often difficult to describe, and interactions hard to afford, to individuals who lack normal vision. The behavior of fish in an aquarium, the play of chimpanzees or lion cubs in a zoo habitat, and the cosmic dance of the planets in a science center?s model of the solar system are examples of dynamic exhibits that have until now been inaccessible to visitors with vision impairments. The ultimate goal of the PI in the Accessible Aquarium Project is to make such dynamic exhibits accessible and engaging for visitors with vision impairments, by providing real-time interpretations through the use of innovative tracking and audio technologies. The PI and his team hope to eventually develop cutting edge bio-tracking and behavior analysis techniques that can provide input for sophisticated, informative, and compelling multimedia auditory displays and sonifications (sounds used for the purpose of conveying information about some kind of data to a listener). Virtually every exhibit in an aquarium is dynamic; furthermore, the aquatic nature of these exhibits provides unique and interesting challenges to the use of typical sensing technologies and techniques for tracking. As a result, considerable innovation and new science will be required for the project to succeed. In this exploratory project the PI will assemble an end-to-end proof-of-concept system that involves a research aquarium with live fish, a camera-based bio-tracking system, an algorithmic music generation system, and a method/interface for users to interact with the resulting audio service. Tracking and sonification algorithms will be developed and integrated, so that the movements of the fish can be used to generate music and other audio annotations. The resulting audio output will be presented to a range of sighted and visually impaired participants, and both objective performance and subjective data will be collected. An iterative design-evaluate-redesign process will allow the PI to rapidly and effectively improve the basic system, and provide a solid proof of concept. This will lead to a complete research platform that can later be used for more in-depth research in all of the constituent fields. The project will draw on the talent of efforts of, and derive inspiration from, a diverse group of researchers, students, and expert members of the community, including a great number of persons with visual impairments.Broader Impacts: This project will advance knowledge in bio-tracking, behavior analysis, sonification, auditory displays, and computer music. While these advances will each be important in their respective fields, the synergy of the advancements in these various areas will open up a whole new world to people with vision impairments: the complex natural choreography of a dynamic aquatic environment. The findings will be applicable beyond aquaria to other kinds of facilities such as zoos and museums, and also beyond individuals with vision impairments to other groups of people such as seniors or those for whom mobility, height, or other problems make it hard to see traditional signage. Indeed, all visitors will benefit from an audio enhancement that allows them to learn about an exhibit while keeping their visual attention on the exhibit itself.