Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: Toolkits for Creating Interaction-powered Energy-aware Computing Systems

“智能”计算设备数量的爆炸式增长导致需要设计电源解决方案，以减少其生态足迹和电子废物。一个可能的答案是“自我维持”系统，从电磁、太阳能和其他来源收集电力，减少对电池和外部充电的需求。这个项目着眼于一种新型的自我维持的电源，系统从人们使用它们的方式中获取能量，例如通过点击按钮或设备的运动。这些用户交互是一个很有前途的电源来源，但需要设备设计人员仔细管理，因为交互的时间和类型都是不可预测的，必须主要满足用户的需求，而不是功率目标。研究小组寻求加深对自我维持系统的新手设计者的信息和资源需求的理解，并创建帮助开发人员管理这些需求的工具。这反过来又将提高计算系统设计的可持续性，其目标是开发电源和开发方法，以推广到广泛的设备设计环境。该项目围绕三个研究重点展开。首先是通过结合对编程自我维持系统的新手和专家的观察、访谈和调查，更好地理解用户需求。第二种是创建模块来从交互中获取能量，为开发人员提供由通用骨干系统支持的分析工具和可组合机制。第三个是开发连接前两个重点的工具包：通过向开发人员提供有关收集器选择、机制设计、能量分析、调试等方面的指导，支持自我维持计算系统的开发、部署和评估。这三项研究重点将由一系列技术验证和用户研究的全面评价加以补充。本项目将采用常见的定性和定量评估技术，包括A/B测试、李克特量表问卷、半结构化访谈、实验者观察、演练演示、通过演示进行评估和结对编程。总的来说，这项研究工作将指导工具的创建，以支持自我维持计算系统的未来发展。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。

The explosion in the number of “smart” computing devices has led to the need to design power solutions that reduce their ecological footprint and electronic waste. One possible answer is “self-sustaining” systems that harvest power from electromagnetic, solar, and other sources, reducing the need for batteries and external charging. This project looks at a novel kind of self-sustaining power source, one where systems draw energy from how people use them, for instance through button clicks or motion of the device. These user interactions are a promising source of power, but require careful management on the part of device designers since both the timing and types of interactions can be unpredictable and must be designed primarily to meet users’ needs rather than power goals. The research team seeks to deepen the understanding of information and resource needs of novice designers of self-sustaining systems and to create tools that help developers manage those needs. This in turn will improve sustainability in the design of computing systems, with the goal of developing power sources and development methods that generalize to a wide set of device design contexts. The project is structured around three research thrusts. The first is to better understand user needs, through a combination of observations of novices and experts programming self-sustaining systems, interviews, and surveys. The second is to create modules to harvest energy from interactions, providing developers with profiling tools and composable mechanisms enabled by a generic backbone system. The third is to develop toolkits that link the first two thrusts: supporting the development, deployment, and assessment of self-sustaining computing systems by providing guidance to developers on harvester selection, mechanism design, energy profiling, debugging, and beyond. These three research thrusts will be complemented by a comprehensive evaluation with a series of technical validations and user studies. This project will adopt common qualitative and quantitative evaluation techniques including A/B tests, Likert-scale questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, experimenters’ observations, walk-through demonstrations, evaluation through demonstrations, and pair programming. Overall, this research effort will guide the creation of tools to support future developments of self-sustaining computing systems.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.