CHS: Small: RUI: Creation of Assistive Technology for the Blind Through Largescale Co-Design

盲人面临着重大挑战，包括患抑郁症的风险增加，劳动力参与率不到普通人群的一半。 除其他因素外，定向和流动性（O M）的困难在这个社区的成员所面临的挑战中发挥了关键作用。 工程师们长期以来一直试图使用技术来帮助O M，但尽管有许多尝试，这些努力的影响一直是温和的。 这种好坏参半的记录是由于技术上的两个缺点（例如，昂贵但不可靠的硬件）以及方法（例如，对广泛的用户样本没有用）。 虽然每一个缺点都可以单独解决，但它们可以一起得到最有效的解决。 为此，该项目将创建一个基础设施，以实现两个新的功能：与世界各地的人们一起设计O M技术;并创建具有最先进的灵活性和准确性的O M技术。 这些功能将基于智能手机，智能手机最近已经更新了3D传感算法，以支持增强现实;虽然这些功能主要是为了支持视力正常的人的体验，但它们有可能被重新利用为O M技术的强大平台。 项目成果将为800万美国盲人的独立性和就业准备提供更大的支持。 其他广泛的影响将来自教育和外展活动，包括为18名本科生（其中至少3人将是盲人）提供暑期研究经验，以及关于辅助技术和以用户为中心的设计的课程，本科生将直接与社区中的人们合作，以改善无障碍环境。分散的团队一起工作来构建O& M技术，最终招募了数十名共同设计师（包括盲人和视力正常的人），以创建在健壮性和可用性方面最先进的系统。 为了招募一个庞大的联合设计师团队，该项目将利用Clew智能手机应用程序的用户群，每月有1,000名独立用户使用该应用程序。 将评估基于智能手机的O M辅助技术功能，利用智能手机的传感器提供叙事反馈和丰富的数据流。 收集的传感器数据将使用新颖的机器学习和众包算法进行处理，以提取信息（例如，用户的位置和附近物体的位置），创建首个同类数据集。 该项目将在该数据集上训练机器学习算法，以在智能手机的AR功能之上创建功能层，从而实现诸如诊断和修复运动跟踪错误等高级功能。 该项目团队将与盲人合作，将这些新功能整合到Clew中，推进室内导航和勘探技术的最新发展。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

People who are blind face significant challenges, including a heightened risk of depression and a rate of participation in the labor force less than half that of the general population. Among other factors, difficulties with orientation and mobility (O&M) play a key role in the challenges faced by members of this community. Engineers have long tried to use technology to assist with O&M, but despite many attempts the impact of these efforts has been modest. This mixed track record is due to both shortcomings in technology (e.g., expensive yet unreliable hardware) as well as in methodology (e.g., not useful to a broad sample of users). While each of these shortcomings could be addressed in isolation, they can be most effectively addressed together. To this end, this project will create an infrastructure to enable two novel capabilities: designing O&M technology with people all around the world; and creating O&M technology with state-of-the-art flexibility and accuracy. These capabilities will be based on smartphones, which have recently been updated with 3D-sensing algorithms to support augmented reality; while these features were primarily designed to support experiences for sighted people, they have the potential to be repurposed as a robust platform for O&M technology. Project outcomes will provide enhanced support for independence and job-readiness for the eight million Americans who are blind. Additional broad impacts will derive from educational and outreach activities, including a summer research experience for 18 undergraduates at least 3 of whom will be blind, and a course on assistive technology and user-centered design where undergraduates will work directly with people in the community to improve accessibility.To achieve its objectives, the project will create a data-driven design process to allow a large, distributed team to work together to build O&M technology, ultimately recruiting dozens of co-designers (both blind and sighted) towards the goal of creating systems that are state-of-the-art in their robustness and usability. To recruit a large team of co-designers, the project will leverage the user base of the Clew smartphone app for O&M, which is used by 1,000 unique users per month. Smartphone-based features for O&M assistive technology will be evaluated, providing narrative feedback coupled with rich data streams utilizing a smartphone's sensors. The collected sensor data will be processed using novel machine learning and crowdsourcing algorithms to extract information (e.g., the user's location and the location of nearby objects), creating a first-of-its-kind dataset. The project will train machine learning algorithms on this dataset to create layers of functionality on top of the AR features of smartphones, to enable advanced capabilities such as the diagnosis and repair of motion-tracking errors. The project team will collaborate with people who are blind to incorporate these new capabilities into Clew, advancing the state-of-the-art in indoor navigation and exploration technology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.