CAREER: Acoustic Ambient Computing: Algorithms, Architectures, and Prototypes

职业：声学环境计算：算法、架构和原型

• 批准号: 2238433
• 负责人: Nirupam Roy
• 金额: $ 60.15万
• 依托单位: University of Maryland, College Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-01 至 2028-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2238433&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Acoustic; Ambient; Computing; Algorithms

Acoustics play a crucial role in connecting humans to computing infrastructure. Voice assistants have created a natural means of interacting with IoT devices; smart earphones are emerging with sensing and assistive skills; and acoustic augmented reality is around the corner. This proposal envisions a new frontier in this computing space by enabling advanced acoustic sensing and inference on low-power, battery-free computing platforms embedded in everyday environments — creating a paradigm called acoustic ambient computing. The paradigm aims to comprehend human activities, motions, gestures, and behavior through ambient, infrastructure-embedded sensing. Target applications include data-driven health technologies and physical recovery tracking in hospitals, immersive assistance at workshops, positive behavioral reinforcement in offices and collaborative workplaces, and even integration in open spaces such as parks or bus stops. This research focuses on developing theoretical building blocks, algorithms, and hardware-software prototypes to realize low-cost, scalable, and sustainable solutions for sensing human activities and interactions using sound as a ubiquitous sensing modality. The project efforts are organized as three research thrusts: (a) The first thrust enables sensing of large-scale gestures and movements near everyday surfaces, like walls, floors, and tabletops. It is realized through a novel coded signal projection method using passive micro-structures at the physical layer and an adaptive intermittent computing architecture. (b) The second thrust zooms into micro-meter level motion and micro gesture detection. This research module explores novel cross-spectrum sensing and localization techniques and a lightweight neural attention-based selective resolution approach for processing. (c) The final research thrust introduces the notion of physical context to voice and speech interactions across indoor and outdoor movements, gestures, and micro-activities. This project will establish the critical components of a wearable-free paradigm to interweave sensing and inference within everyday environments so that computing services can be effortlessly blended into people’s daily lives. The developed platforms and prototypes will foster a range of new applications in interactive home automation, assistance and healthcare, collaborative workspaces, and home security. It will help create frameworks for retrofitting existing buildings and augmenting new indoor and outdoor environments to turn them into interactive smart spaces. The proposed research examines the interplay of embedded intelligence, wireless sensing, low-power networking systems, and human-computer interaction. Insights from this project will also lead to new learning modules used to teach the fundamentals of device-free computing to students. Moreover, this project will introduce the concepts of low-power embedded intelligence to undergraduate and K-12 students.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.

声学在连接人类与计算基础设施方面发挥着至关重要的作用。语音助手创造了一种与物联网设备交互的自然方式;智能耳机正在出现传感和辅助技能;声学增强现实即将到来。该提案设想了一个新的前沿，在这个计算空间，使先进的声学传感和推理的低功耗，无电池的计算平台嵌入在日常环境中-创建一个范例称为声学环境计算。该范式旨在通过环境，基础设施嵌入式传感来理解人类活动，运动，手势和行为。目标应用包括医院中的数据驱动健康技术和身体恢复跟踪，研讨会中的沉浸式协助，办公室和协作工作场所中的积极行为强化，甚至公园或公共汽车站等开放空间的集成。该研究的重点是开发理论构建模块，算法和硬件-软件原型，以实现低成本，可扩展和可持续的解决方案，用于使用声音作为无处不在的感知方式来感知人类活动和交互。该项目的工作分为三个研究重点：（a）第一个重点是能够感知日常表面附近的大规模手势和运动，如墙壁，地板和桌面。它是通过一种新的编码信号投影方法，在物理层使用无源微结构和自适应间歇计算架构。(b)第二个重点是放大到微米级的运动和微手势检测。该研究模块探索了新的交叉频谱传感和定位技术以及基于轻量级神经注意力的选择性分辨率处理方法。(c)最后的研究重点是将物理环境的概念引入室内和室外运动，手势和微活动的语音和语音交互。该项目将建立一个无穿戴模式的关键组件，在日常环境中交织传感和推理，使计算服务可以毫不费力地融入人们的日常生活。开发的平台和原型将在交互式家庭自动化、援助和医疗保健、协作式医疗和家庭安全方面促进一系列新的应用。它将帮助创建框架，以改造现有建筑，并增强新的室内和室外环境，将其转变为交互式智能空间。拟议的研究将探讨嵌入式智能、无线传感、低功耗网络系统和人机交互的相互作用。从这个项目的见解也将导致新的学习模块，用于教的基础知识的设备免费计算的学生。此外，该项目将向本科生和K-12学生介绍低功耗嵌入式智能的概念。该奖项反映了NSF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。