SBIR Phase I: Neural Algorithms for Multimodal Sensory Analysis

该项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是在智能手机、智能手表和其他可穿戴设备等广泛的能源受限设备中实现连续传感应用。如果超低功率传感处理的发展没有重大创新，连续传感仍将是一个仅限于具有稳定和充足电源的环境的利基应用。这项提案中描述的技术将展示连续传感设备在具有严格能源限制的移动或偏远环境中的可行性和潜在的广泛部署。拟议技术的一个重要直接市场是智能手机和可穿戴设备市场，该市场拥有庞大的客户基础，在该市场，许多新的和新兴的最终用户应用程序可以利用环境感知来触发基于情景和预期的行动。拟议的技术广泛适用于许多其他市场和领域，包括关键患者传感器、个人健身设备、军事应用和环境监测器的医疗、健康和安全监测。灵活地为这些和其他应用程序部署连续传感的能力有可能彻底改变这些市场，并创建全新的和不可预见的应用领域。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将开发一种新的平台技术--灵感来自哺乳动物处理感觉信息的神经通路--以实现？始终倾听？智能手机、平板电脑、智能手表和其他支持传感器的可穿戴设备等能源受限设备的音频处理能力。提供传感器处理能力的核心技术将模拟人类用来分析来自各种感官的信息的生物神经元的许多计算特性和能力。这项研究将允许广泛的设备持续监控他们的麦克风，使用流音频输入来解释各种用户命令，从背景噪音推断用户的当前背景和需求，甚至识别设备听到的危险和有害情况。这项研究的目标是在低功耗微处理器和微控制器上部署这些功能，这些微处理器和微控制器通常被称为传感器集线器，许多现代智能手机、平板电脑和可穿戴设备中都包含这些功能。传感器集线器上的目标部署将启用？始终监听？而不会影响设备的电池寿命。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to enable continuous sensing applications in a wide range of energy-constrained devices like smartphones, smartwatches, and other wearables. Without dramatic innovations in the development of ultralow power sensory processing, continuous sensing will remain a niche application limited to environments with a stable and plentiful power source. The technology described in this proposal will demonstrate the viability and potential widespread deployment of continuous sensing devices in mobile or remote environments with strict energy constraints. An important immediate market for the proposed technology with significant customer base is the smartphone and wearables market, where many new and emerging end user applications could leverage environmental sensing to trigger context-based and anticipatory actions. The proposed technology is broadly applicable to a number of other markets and domains, including medical, health, and safety monitoring of critical patient sensors, personal fitness devices, military applications, and environmental monitors. The ability to flexibly deploy continuous sensing for these and other applications has the potential to revolutionize these markets and create entirely new and unforeseen application domains.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a novel platformtechnology--inspired by the mammalian neural pathways, which process sensory information--to enable?always listening? audio processing capability within energy-constrained devices such as smartphones, tablets, smart watches, and other sensor-enabled wearable devices. The core technology, which provides the sensor processing capability, will model many of the computational properties and capabilities of the biological neurons that humans use to analyze information from their various senses. This research will allow a broad range of devices to continuously monitor their microphones, using streaming audio input to interpret various user commands, infer the current context and needs of the user from background noise, and even identify dangerous and harmful situations heard by the device. The research will target deployment of these capabilities on low power microprocessors and microcontrollers, often referred to as sensor hubs, which are included in many modern smartphones, tablets, and wearables. Targeting deployment on the sensor hubs will enable ?always listening? devices without compromising the battery life of the device.