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

博物馆、科学中心、动物园和水族馆的职责是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适应日益多样化的游客群体，他们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，往往发现很难让数百万盲人或视障人士有意义地参与其中。当展品是动态的时，问题就变得复杂了，因为运动和变化往往难以描述，对视力不正常的人来说，互动也难以承受。水族馆里鱼的行为，动物园里黑猩猩或狮子幼崽的玩耍，科学中心里行星的宇宙之舞？S的太阳系模型是动态展品的例子，到目前为止，视力受损的游客无法进入这些展品。在无障碍水族馆项目中，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释，使这些动态展品能够为视力受损的游客提供方便和吸引人的服务。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，可以为复杂的、信息丰富的、引人注目的多媒体听觉显示和声音（用于向听众传达某种数据信息的声音）提供输入。实际上，水族馆里的每一件展品都是动态的；此外，这些展品的水生性质为使用典型的传感技术和跟踪技术提供了独特而有趣的挑战。因此，该项目的成功将需要大量的创新和新科学。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，包括一个装有活鱼的研究水族馆，一个基于摄像头的生物跟踪系统，一个算法音乐生成系统，以及一个用户与由此产生的音频服务交互的方法/界面。跟踪和声音化算法将被开发和集成，这样鱼的运动就可以用来生成音乐和其他音频注释。由此产生的音频输出将呈现给一系列视力正常和视力受损的参与者，并收集客观表现和主观数据。一个迭代的设计-评估-重新设计过程将允许PI快速有效地改进基本系统，并提供坚实的概念证明。这将形成一个完整的研究平台，以后可以在所有组成领域进行更深入的研究。该项目将从包括大量视障人士在内的不同研究人员、学生和专家群体中汲取智慧和灵感。更广泛的影响：该项目将推进生物追踪、行为分析、声效、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人士打开一个全新的世界：动态水生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，如老年人或那些行动不便、身高或其他问题难以看到传统标志的人。事实上，所有的参观者都将受益于音频增强，使他们能够了解展品，同时保持他们的视觉注意力在展品本身。

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.