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

盲人面临着巨大的挑战，包括患抑郁症的风险增加，劳动力参与率不到总人口的一半。在其他因素中，定向和行动困难（O&amp；M）在这个社区成员面临的挑战中发挥了关键作用。长期以来，工程师们一直试图利用技术来协助O&amp；M，但尽管进行了多次尝试，这些努力的影响一直不大。这种混合的跟踪记录是由于技术上的缺点（例如，昂贵但不可靠的硬件）以及方法上的缺点（例如，对广泛的用户样本不有用）。虽然每一个缺点都可以单独解决，但它们可以最有效地一起解决。为此，该项目将创建一个基础设施，以实现两个新功能：与世界各地的人一起设计O&amp；M技术；并创造具有最先进的灵活性和准确性的O&amp；M技术。这些功能将基于智能手机，智能手机最近更新了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而设计的，但它们有可能被重新定位为一个强大的O&amp技术平台。项目成果将为800万美国盲人的独立和就业准备提供更好的支持。教育和推广活动将产生更广泛的影响，包括为18名本科生提供夏季研究经验，其中至少有3名是盲人，以及一门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一起工作，以改善可访问性。为了实现其目标，该项目将创建一个数据驱动的设计过程，以允许一个大型的、分布式的团队一起工作来构建O&amp；M技术，最终招募数十名共同设计师（包括盲人和盲人），以创建在健壮性和可用性方面都是最先进的系统。为了招募一个庞大的合作设计师团队，该项目将充分利用O&amp；M的Clew智能手机应用程序的用户基础，该应用程序每月有1000名独立用户使用。将评估基于智能手机的辅助技术功能，利用智能手机的传感器提供叙事反馈和丰富的数据流。收集到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），创建首个此类数据集。该项目将在该数据集上训练机器学习算法，在智能手机的AR功能之上创建功能层，以实现诸如运动跟踪错误诊断和修复等高级功能。项目团队将与盲人合作，将这些新功能整合到Clew中，推动室内导航和勘探技术的发展。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.