CHS: Medium: Design Tools for Physical Computing Objects

随着计算机成本的下降和交互式计算逐渐离开桌面，计算可以呈现出各种各样的物理形式。目前，新的计算机接口的创建仅限于已经可用的格式，例如智能手机，即使这样，也仅限于相对简单的计算机接口。未来的计算将超越台式机、笔记本电脑、平板电脑和智能手机，进入我们生活的方方面面。但要实现这一点，就需要设计工具，使计算能够迅速适应不同的物理形式和任务需求。这个项目将研究用于开发交互式物理对象的工具包。该项目将提高国家在发明和开发计算新用途方面的竞争力，并使在野外而不是在实验室中使用物理计算对象进行丰富多样的可用性研究成为可能。创建物理计算对象将使社会上更大比例的人能够以全新的方式使用计算机，以满足他们的工作需求。这种设备的快速设计和创造将为消费电脑打开新的市场。这些目标是通过三个相互关联的努力来实现的：(1)一个可插拔的工具包，用于创建传感器/执行器系统，形成这些对象的计算基础。该工具包的独特之处在于，当将组件连接在一起时，不仅可以形成设备的初始原型，还可以显示其物理和计算特性，从而自动支持其他设计工具。使用此工具包构建的原型将固有地包含足够的信息来驱动其自身的制造。通过将原型拼接在一起，我们的工具将自动知道如何以易于部署的尺寸执行电子元件的定制制造。(2)通过3D打印开发物理形式，使物理形状、传感器和执行器与软件和电子设备集成，从而轻松地原型化一个完整的物理/计算对象。一个目标是抑制机械设计的挑战，这样设计师就可以专注于形状和可用性。(3)交互式机器学习技术将被创造出来，以便轻松地开发人类活动（由传感器检测到）与软件识别之间的映射。众所周知，将人类置于机器学习的训练循环中会改变训练集的构建方式。算法将被开发来适应和利用这种行为。这个项目将为设计师在创建物理计算对象时最困难的概念提供新的知识。

As computers decline in cost and interactive computation moves off of the desktop, computation can assume a variety of physical forms. At present, the creation of new computer interfaces is limited to already-available formats, such as smartphones, and even then is constrained to relatively simplistic computer interfaces. Computing in the future will push beyond desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones into objects that fit into every part of our lives. But for this to happen, design tools are needed that can rapidly adapt computing to different physical forms and task needs. This project will study toolkits for the development of interactive physical objects. The project will increase national competitiveness in the invention and development of new uses of computation, and make possible rich and diverse usability research with physical computing objects in the wild rather than in the lab. Creating physical computing objects will allow a greater proportion of society to use computers in ways that fit their work requirements in fundamentally new ways. The rapid design and creation of such devices will open new markets for consumer computing.These ends are achieved through three interrelated efforts: (1) A pluggable toolkit for creating sensor/actuator systems that form the computational basis for such objects. This toolkit will be unique in that the components when plugged together not only form an initial prototype of the device but self-reveal their physical and computational characteristics to automatically support the other design tools. A prototype constructed with this toolkit will inherently contain sufficient information to drive its own fabrication. By plugging together the prototype our tools will automatically know how to perform a custom fabrication of the electronics at a size that can be readily deployed. (2) Development of physical form via 3D printing such that the physical shape, sensors and actuators integrate with the software and electronics so as to easily prototype a complete physical/computational object. One goal is to suppress the challenges of mechanical design so that designers can focus on shape and usability. (3) Interactive machine learning techniques will be created to easily develop the mapping between human activities (as detected by sensors) and their recognition in software. It is known that putting humans in the training loop for machine learning changes the way training sets are built. Algorithms will be developed that both adapt to and exploit this behavior. This project will produce new knowledge of the concepts that are most difficult for designers when creating physical computational objects.