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2008
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We Are Survival Machines
In 2012 zombies invade the city threatening to destroy the living. Citizens turn to robots to protect all that is human. The ensuing war is captured by image and audio. We Are Survival Machines, created by Carl DiSalvo, assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and David Holstius, senior research programmer at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, is an interactive installation documenting this near future battle for humanity between the undead and sentient machines, set in the streets of Pittsburgh.
www.pittsburghlive.com/x/events/
Pittsburgh Live - July 9, 2008
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Georgia Tech Team Develops Interactive Comics
The developers of Embodied Comics at Georgia Tech can't say yet what the real-world applications might be for their creation — a blend of comics, video games and performance art. "The idea is to take comics out of the comic books and make them interactive," said Ozge Samanci, a Ph.D. student in digital media who came up with the concept and did the drawings. "Can we bring it into 3D and still call it comics?" . . . Samanci worked with assistant professor Alexandra Mazalek, who has a film background, and Yanfeng Chen, a master's student who studies human-computer interaction, to develop the interactive comic.
www.ajc.com/metro/content/living/stories/2008/07/07/georgia_tech_interactive_comics.html
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - July 9, 2008
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The Missing 'Links': Looking Towards an Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) -- or the "real world Web" -- has been listed by research firm Gartner as one of the most disruptive technologies companies could face over the next few years. The possibilities of AR are impressive. During a heart transplant, identifier labels can be superimposed over the valves and chambers of a beating heart. On airplane factory floors, AR visors help electricians navigate complex mazes of wiring. Military minds dream up darker uses of AR.
Early on, consumer products might be predominantly entertainment-oriented, available not just on cell phones but also handheld gaming and other devices. For instance there's the "magic book" idea, where every page can host a virtual 3-D pop-up that's viewable through a visor. Or "AR tennis," where a virtual tennis court is superimposed on a real table and you view the action through your cell phone screen. The "racket" is your cell phone, which you wave through the air to hit the virtual ball. (Just don't topple your beer with your backhand.)
Offerings similar to these might reach store shelves within a year or so, believes Blair MacIntyre, who directs the Augmented Environments Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which devised the cemetery experiment. edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/02/digital.augmentedreality/
CNN.com - July 2, 2008
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Studies in Videogames
Videogames have won a prominent place in popular culture, but as a field of academic study, they're still working through an intermediate stage. "No scholar has to justify being a chemist or a French literary scholar," says Ian Bogost, author of "Persuasive Games" and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, but games scholarship is "a research track you have to get away with." . . Though students can pursue the technical side of game design at many colleges and universities, only a handful, including the University of Southern California and MIT, offer graduate degrees that put students on the track to games scholarship. Of the roughly 40 students in the digital media graduate program at Georgia Tech, about one-third are focusing on games, including a doctoral student looking at videogames through the historical lens of avant-garde art. But because Georgia Tech Ph.D. program is only four years old, a doctor of game studies has yet to graduate. (Subscription Required*)
online.wsj.com/article/SB121460385251911957.html
Wall Street Journal - June 28, 2008
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Military Robots Would Push Ethical Boundaries
The robots of the future will likely work in concert, like a swarm of ants. Others may creep like spiders or hover like hummingbirds, if the work at the University of Pennsylvania is an indication. . . ."Intelligence is not the sole province of human beings," said robot engineer Ron Arkin of Georgia Tech, who is collaborating with University of Pennsylvania professors. A desert ant, he said, is smart at living in the desert. Georgia Tech's Arkin has been writing and speaking on what he calls robo-ethics. The most important consideration, he said, is to hold onto today's ethical principles — "what humanity has deemed ethical behavior."
www.twincities.com/national/ci_9727845
Philadelphia Inquirer - June 28, 2008
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Foley Named Interim Dean of the College of Computing
On June 26 the Office of the Provost announced that James D. Foley, professor in the School of Interactive Computing, will take over as interim dean of the College of Computing, effective July 1, 2008. Foley will work together with Rich DeMillo, the current John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing, who announced in a June 12 letter that he will step down in November.
www.cc.gatech.edu/news/features/foley-named-interim-dean-of-the-college-of-computing
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New Group Calls for Broadband in Every Pot
Embellishing on the basic American entitlements to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a new lobbying group is promoting broadband Internet access for all. InternetForEveryone.org wants to make it an issue in the upcoming general elections and is urging citizens to clamber onto the high-speed bandwagon... If the group can achieve its goals, the impact on society could be huge, observed Beki Grinter, associate professor at Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing. "I think it's very necessary... Broadband is where a lot of innovation is heading in the technology industry," she told TechNewsWorld. "One example is the smart home, networked with all the resources that the Internet provides, but also working with doctors online and making that available to all Americans. You can reflect on the history of the telephone and the 'lifeline' guarantees... That's what universal access needs to mean now regarding broadband -- and I think it's a way to make inroads into the digital divide."
www.technewsworld.com/story/63565.html
TechNewsWorld - June 25, 2008
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Social Gaming Summit: What Makes Social Gaming Fun?
Social Gaming Summit: What Makes Social Gaming Fun? At the Social Gaming Summit, a panel featuring Persuasive Games' Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech) and XEODesign president Nicole Lazzaro discussed what fun is in the context of social gaming, using Facebook gaming to argue that social context is key.
www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php
Gamasutra - June 25, 2008
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Can Videogames Be Funny?
.. .Most videogames avoid humor as a major theme, with exceptions like Electronic Arts' The Sims series and Telltale Games' Sam & Max titles. Nintendo's Wii has brought more silly titles to the market like Ubisoft's Rayman Raving Rabbids with its hordes of screaming bunnies and outlandish party games like WarioWare: Smooth Moves. But Wideload hopes to revive humor as a viable videogame category. . . .The challenge for games like Chimp was overcoming the structural barriers that keep games from being funny. "Humor is verbal. It's about language and people talking to each other," says Ian Bogost, an associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, and videogame developer. Part of the problem, he says, is that simulating complicated human behavior, such as telling jokes, is very difficult.
online.wsj.com/article/SB121399814966792965.html (Subscription Required*)
Wall Street Journal - June 21, 2008
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Tinkerer’s Toy
When the Chumby first went on sale a few months ago, the result was not exactly the cultural pile-on occasioned by some gadget debuts, like the iPhone. But Carla Diana knew what it was, and so did many in her peer group. Diana taught industrial design until recently at the Georgia Institute of Technology and her own work routinely blurs boundaries between art, technology and products; The Chumby is a fairly innocent-looking object resembling a clock radio, with a small touch screen and a leather-covered, padded exterior that feels like a beanbag.
www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22wwln-consumed-t.html
New York Times - June 22, 2008
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How to Turn On a Robot
According to presentations at the First International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships, such scenarios aren't far off. . . .Ron Arkin, a professor of computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology who participated in the conference, says the questions aren't spurious. Just as pornography provided incentive for the development of videorecording and the Internet, Arkin says, sex will drive robotic developments. "It's gonna be here before we know it," he says. "If the questions aren't asked, the technology will just show up on your doorstep."
chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i42/42a00701.htm (Subscription Required*)
Chronicle of Higher Education - June 23, 2008
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Bruce Walker and Frank Dellaert Develop High Tech ‘Seeing-Eye Dog’
College of Computing professors and GVU members Bruce Walker and Frank Dellaert have developed a wearable system that tracks a blind person's position using GPS and emits sounds to alert them of obstacles such as fire hydrants or park benches.
textiles21.blogspot.com/2008/06/helping-blind-see-gps-navigation-system.html
Textiles 21 -June 10, 2008
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Foley Elected Vice President of SIGGRAPH
Jim Foley, professor in the School of Interactive Computing, has been elected to a three-year term as vice president of SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques), the largest special interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Since 1974 SIGGRAPH has sponsored the annual SIGGRAPH conference, which is now attended by more than 30,000 people. The 2008 SIGGRAPH conference is scheduled in Los Angeles in August. This year the group also is sponsoring the first ever SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore December 11-13.
SIGGRAPH also sponsors other conferences around the world, and the 87 professional and student chapters of the organizations around the world also hold regular events.
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Computing Alumnus Wins NSF Career Award
Anind K. Dey, who earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the College of Computing, has received the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award, the agency’s most prestigious award for junior faculty. www.cc.gatech.edu/news/coc-alumnus-wins-nsf-early-career-development-award
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Gregory Abowd Named Interim Director of Health Sciences Institute
Gregory Abowd, Distinguished Professor in the School of Interactive Computing, has been named interim director of the Health Systems Institute (HSI) at Georgia Tech. Abowd will oversee HSI while a committee headed by Associate Director Don Giddens, dean of the College of Engineering, leads an international search for a new director. www.cc.gatech.edu/news/coc-professor-gregory-abowd-named-hsi-interim-director
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Ad Watch: Media Power's Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality could be the future of advertising, if you ask Media Power CEO Richard Jenkins. Aside from being just very cool, the technology, currently being researched at Georgia Tech, essentially puts the consumer in control of how he/she is marketed to. . .the company is investing in the future and have pledged $5 million (along with development tools and hardware) over the next five years to Georgia Tech's GVU Center for educational activities and research in AR and mobile computing. Media Power hopes that this will help the GVU Center realize both mobile and entertainment applications, including games. "Augmented Reality is one of the most significant emerging industries in the world right now," said Rich DeMillo, Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. "Its influence will be felt from entertainment to education to health care. Georgia Tech's leadership in AR research and Media Power's strength in commercialization make this an ideal partnership to achieve our mutual goal of creating breakthrough technologies that achieve sustained real world impact."
www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/ad-watch-media-powers-augmented-reality/
Game Daily - June 2, 2008
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In "Creatively Dead" Industry, Change Comes From The Outside
In mid-1980s Nicaragua, a woman stood beside a burnt out bus in a tiny, remote town. Game designer Jim Gasperini was in the region to visit his brother, a journalist covering Contra issues during the Reagan administration. The bus, the woman told Gasperini, had been provided by the Nicaraguan government, and she had relied on it as her only means of visiting her sister. The Contras - anti-government guerillas funded by the U.S. - had destroyed the bus... At the organization's 2008 event in New York, panel moderator Celia Pearce (Georgia Tech) introduced Gasperini, as well as another of the first social game designers, Balance of Power creator Chris Crawford, who's also credited with instigating an informal event in his living room in 1987 that would grow to become the Game Developers' Conference we know today. The idea of developing games for other audiences than the core gamer, and with other goals than simple entertainment, is often hailed as a "new" phenomenon, as is the idea that games will "one day" be treated in the mainstream as a serious and valuable pursuit. But Gasperini and Crawford are notable for beginning this work long before there was a game console in every home. "In digital culture, people always assume that they're doing something for the first time when in fact that is very seldom the case," said Pearce. kotaku.com/5012606/in-creatively-dead-industry-change-comes-from-the-outside
Kotaku.com - June 4, 2008
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Dispatch This: Game Intelligence
Games theorist Ian Bogost and I share an interest in game adaptation, though I'm more into boardgames-to-wargames than Bogost's focus on coin-ops to consoles. In any case, Bogost considered the issue last Wednesday as it relates to translating sports.blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/007049.html
PC World - June 2, 2008
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Media Power Has Pledged $5M to GVU Center for AR Research
Media Power Inc. has pledged $5 million over the next five years to Georgia Tech's GVU Center, aiming to boost research and education in Augmented Reality (AR) and mobile computing.
Media Power will also donate hardware and development tools to the GVU Center and will help to find realistic settings to deploy and evaluate game ideas. AR deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data. Most AR research looks into the use of live video imagery that is digitally processed and augmented by computer-generated graphics. Georgia Tech will partner with Media Power's AR division, Magitech, to envision, prototype and evaluate the next generation of mobile AR games and entertainment applications.
"Augmented Reality is one of the most exciting technologies available today," said Carl Freer, Media Power co-founder. "Thus far, it has only existed in the research lab. It is our intention to commercialize the technology and make it available to the public at large. Augmented Reality offers us the opportunity to create an entirely new advertising paradigm." www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/05/26/daily19.html
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Robots Take Field at Science Center
Pittsburgh's North Shore plays host today to a three-day affair billed as "the world's most Lilliputian sporting event." The RoboCup 2008 U.S. Open will feature scores of robots ranging in size from about 20 inches tall down to "nanobots" smaller than an amoeba. Most of them will square off in soccer competition. All events are at the Carnegie Science Center. Winners will proceed to the international competition to be held in Suzhou, China, in July. "The Aibo robots should be interesting because they are more robust," said Tucker Balch, the event's co-chair, who is from the Georgia Institute of Technology. The robots, which Sony Corp. no longer makes, sport faster computers than other computers in RoboCup, he said.www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_569307.html
Pittsburgh Tribune Review - May 25, 2008
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Shwetak Patel Wins Best Paper at Pervasive Computing 2008
Shwetak Patel, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Interactive Computing (SIC) took home the Best Paper Award from the Pervasive Computing 2008 conference, which was held May 19-22 in Sydney, Australia.
Professor Gregory Abowd, Patel’s faculty adviser, and Matt Reynolds, former Senior Research Scientist in SIC and now assistant professor at Duke University, contributed to the winning paper titled “Detecting Human Movement by Differential Air Pressure Sensing in HVAC System Ductwork: An Exploration in Infrastructure Mediated Sensing.”
Patel also won the Best Paper and Best Presentation awards at Ubicomp 2007 and was nominated for best paper at the Pervasive Computing conference in 2006. In his five years as a graduate student at the College of Computing, Patel has published nine full papers at these two top forums for research in ubiquitous computing.
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Private Eyes Are Watching You
. . . Though the technology has been around for years and the British are embracing it and moving forward, technology experts say facial recognition -- and the cameras needed to support it -- wouldn't fly with privacy-obsessed Americans, at least not yet. "One of the reasons that the United Kingdom has moved forward on this a little faster than other places is there's just a large use of cameras in support of crime reduction in general," said Aaron Bobick, chairman of the school of interactive computing at Georgia Tech, which has done research into both facial and gait recognition. "Once that starts to make video available, then the question of what you can do with that video becomes important."
abcnews.go.com/print
ABC News - May 19, 2008
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Fashion for Techno-Geeks
Who says you can't take it with you? Thad Starner wears his computer wherever he goes. It comprises a hand-held nine-button keyboard, a battery pack slung over his shoulder, and a tiny monitor attached to his glasses an inch from his left eye. The Georgia Tech professor, a pioneer and leading light in the field of mobile computing, finds this set-up a model of efficiency and convenience. His calendar is always handy. He has his computer's memory to supplement his own. He can work anywhere, even lying down if he chooses. When driving, he can check a map more quickly, and thus more safely, than he could a dashboard GPS screen.
www.ajc.com/living/content/living/stories/2008/05/16/design_0518.html
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - May 16, 2008
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Adapted Aircon Can Track Movement in the Home
A device that transforms an air-conditioning unit into a surveillance system has been developed by US researchers. It can track human movement through the different rooms of a house by detecting small differences in air pressure as people pass from one room to another. The device could make aircon systems more intelligent and reduce energy consumption. Motion sensors may be the obvious way to track human activity in the home, but installing such systems is expensive, says Shwetak Patel at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Patel says his alternative is cheaper, simply requiring one modification to a house's heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system.
technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13919-adapted-aircon-can-track-movement-in-the-home.html
New Scientist - May 16, 2008 (Economic Times)
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'Smart Clothes' Wear Technology Well
. . .The concept of "smart clothes" may sound like something out of James Bond or "Minority Report," but the enabling technology already exists. Microprocessors are now the size of a fingernail. Conductive textiles with wiring woven into the fabric are on the market. Bluetooth is ubiquitous. Though not much is available commercially yet, you can see prototypes of wearable technology in the Contextual Computing Group lab at Georgia Tech which is in the forefront of research in this area. With products such as these, computing will become ever more integrated into our everyday lives. As Tech grad student Daniel Ashbrook predicts: "There will come a day when we'll have cellphones in all our clothing —- or, more likely, something we can't imagine."
Photo Gallery:
projects.ajc.com/gallery/view/living/designwear0516/
Article:
www.accessatlanta.com/arts/content/printedition/2008/05/18/designfront.html
Atlanta Journal-Constitution- May 18, 2008
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Tech Grad Looks to Merge Wristwatch, Computer
Now that people use their cellphones to check the time, the wristwatch seems on its way to becoming primarily a fashion accessory. But if computer scientists like Georgia Tech Daniel Ashbrook succeed, the wristwatch could become a cool gadget once more. Say you want to check the time — or, for that matter, the stock market, the weather or the caller ID — on your cellphone. It takes longer to get out the phone and find the application than it does to perform the task. The Tech graduate student is working on transferring these tasks — "microinteractions," which take under four seconds to complete — to your wrist.
www.ajc.com/living/content/living/stories/2008/05/16/watch_0518.html
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - May 18, 2008
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Hi, Tech
A car comes whizzing down a crowded Lawrenceville street, its engine roaring... The machine activates a lever, dropping a "Slow Down" sign into the driver's view. The device is only a model for now, but designer and seventh-grader Langston MacDiarmid says it could be put to practical use to stop cars from flying down Main Street. . .MacDiarmid's "Speeder Spoiler" is just one of the creations to come out of a push by local universities to get communities thinking about technology. Carl DiSalvo, one of the architects of the Lawrenceville Neighborhood Networks program, says that the goal of last summer's workshops was to introduce people to things like robotics through public art. "We started off with this idea of how do you think about using advanced technologies in the context of neighborhood activism," says DiSalvo, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology is graduate and post-doc work at Carnegie Mellon. "From the very start, it was focused on trying to work specifically with neighborhoods, with real-world neighborhoods, so, not online communities." DiSalvo and his team went to the community without an agenda, he says. After brainstorming sessions, the neighborhood decided to focus on using technology to document dangerous drivers and air quality.
www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content
Pittsburg City Paper - May 15, 2008
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The Tactile Side of Games
Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of having a mahjong addict neighbor can attest to the double-edged sword that is traditional table games: the sensation of having smooth and cool tiles in your hand can be a pleasurable one,. . Still, it's the positives of the sense of touch that Ian Bogost picks up on in his latest Gamasutra column.
kotaku.com/389238/the-tactile-side-of-games
Kotaku.com - May 10, 2008
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Games Don't Create Killers, Book Says
Playing video games does not turn children into deranged, blood-thirsty super-killers, according to a new book by a pair of Harvard researchers. . . ."One thing I like about their approach is that they've tried to historicize the whole concept of a media controversy and that we've seen this before," said Ian Bogost, a professor at Georgia Tech known for his studies on video games. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24528625/
MSNBC - May. 8, 2008
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Persuasive Games: Texture
[As part of his regular Gamasutra column, author/designer Ian Bogost looks at 'texture' in games - connecting the virtual to the real via rumble and physical simulation, from Hard Drivin' to Rez.] . . .Tactile computer interfaces, or haptics, became a consumer industry by the early 1990s, with companies like Immersion developing cheaper, simpler sensors and motors that allowed such devices to be integrated into objects other than the expensive, awkward gloves and vests of dedicated virtual reality labs. Thanks to the Nintendo 64 Rumble Pak add-on, we usually call haptic feedback in video games "rumble." www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3652/persuasive_games_texture.php
Gamasutra - May 10, 2008
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GVU Launches New Logo
Dear GVU Community,
This past fall we celebrated GVU’s fifteenth anniversary and the incredible impact that GVU faculty, students, and alumni have had in changing the world’s understanding and use of interacting computing technologies. As we looked at these past accomplishments, it became clear that we needed to update the GVU logo to better reflect our thriving research community. We needed a logo to reflect the center’s shift from graphics, visualization, and usability to a broader research portfolio with the overarching mission of “Unlocking human potential through technical innovation.”
So, I am pleased to share with you the new GVU logo designed to better reflect GVU’s innovative research mission. Claudia Winegarden, a new assistant professor of Industrial Design in the College of Architecture, volunteered to help us design a new GVU logo that respects our past and points to a dynamic future.
Sincerely,
Beth Mynatt
GVU Center at Georgia Tech
Unlocking Human Potential Through Technical Innovation
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Ian Bogost on Advertising in Games
Ok, so a billboard in a driving game may make sense — but what about games where it doesn't make sense? As Ian Bogost points out, "Would an orc order pizza? Does a dystopian planet from the future need a pacer drink?" This untapped potential of games upsets the very foundation of advertising as we know it. Instead of surrounding us with images that reflect lives unlived, games can allow us to try out hypothetical lives with new products, people and ideas. To realise this potential, advertisers of both goods and viewpoints must stop blindly inserting their billboards into games or creating feeble copies of the cornerstones of videogame pop culture. Instead, they must start simulating the products, public policy positions, charitable interventions and other worldly ideas in new games - games worthy of our attention.kotaku.com/386953/ian-bogost-on-advertising-in-games
Kotaku.com - May 5, 2008
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We've Gone Gametastic on the Website This Week
You don't have to look too hard on guardian.co.uk this week to see that we've gone computer games mad. In part, it's the release of Grand Theft Auto IV that has inspired so much games coverage, but ironically there's not much about GTA this week. With so much attention on one title, we figured it was only appropriate to profile the entire industry and give the rest of the players a say... We also went indie wild: discovering the secrets of making successful games on a shoestring. Ian Bogost, a leader in the newsgaming movement and one of its successful independent developers, gave us the insider's view on how to create games that take news stories as their kernel of inspiration and distribute them to a mass market. John Kirriemuir took this idea a step further and looked at how the UK's education system is integrating games into its lessons.
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/01/gamesweek
Guardian - May 1, 2008
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Computing Culture at Georgia Tech
Back from a lush, if a bit too warm for my post-winter constitution, Atlanta, I'll cover my talk in a separate post--but first I want to talk about the amazing grad students I met. They appear to work in a much more driven and stream-lined university environment than mine, and while I have some reservations about this educational model, there's no doubt that good people are getting some good work done there ... All of this reminds me of my conversations with Carl DiSalvo. I first met Carl when he was a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon, and now he's Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech. We continue to share an interest in activist research: This visit I pointed him to work in activist anthropology and he pointed me to a new book, Engaging Contradictions: The Case for Activist Research (pdf here), that looks quite interesting. www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2008/04/computing-culture-at-georgia-tech.php
Purse lip square jaw - April 28. 2008
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Cultures of Virtual Worlds
Over the last two days I’ve had the real pleasure of being back in the classroom, straining at times to hear over the noise of the construction of the engineering building next door. But it was worth it being able to hear 30 ethnographic researchers gathered at UC Irvine to present their studies of just what we avatars are doing inside virtual worlds. The theme for the gathering was Cultures of Virtual Worlds, organized by the Center for Ethnography in the Department of Anthropology and sponsored by Intel’s People and Practices Research Group ... Dr. Celia Pearce of Georgia Tech, traversed worlds for us as she reported on the forced migration of Uru (Myst Online) players, as they became refugees in the “new” worlds of There.com and Second Life due to the closing of their game. She showed us how the artifacts from one world ported over to another through recreation of the old world in the new, transforming both the place and the narrative of the new, joined community. Her experiences highlight how a true community, once created, does not die easily – indeed another world often becomes the beneficiary. freshtakes.typepad.com/sl_communicators/2008/04/cultures-of-vir.html
Business Communicators of Second Life: Cultures of Virtual Worlds - April 27, 2008
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Georgia Tech Gesture Toolkit: Supporting Experiments in Gesture Recognition
This paper introduces a HMM-based gesture recognition library, called Georgia Tech Gesture Toolkit, which leverages Cambridge University's speech recognitiontoolkit, HTK. It abstracts the lower level details of the HMM process and allows users to focus instead on high level gesture recognition concepts. Georgia Tech Gesture Toolkit provides users with tools for preparation, training, validation and recognition. It also provides tools allowing novice users to automatically generate models with different topologies. kevinhaptics.blogspot.com/2008/04/georgia-tech-gesture-toolkit-supporting.html
Kevin's Blog for Gesture Recognition - April 28, 2008
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Building a More Sociable Robot
Researchers are working to develop robots with personalities — moving on beyond the mechanical arms found in today's factories, to devices that could interact with people on a social level. . . Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of the board of iRobot, explains, "You know customers have told me for many years about naming their robots. I think they buy them as appliances.. . But they get them home and you know they negotiate around the furniture, they back around the stairs. They communicate with bleeps and blubs. They go back to the charging station and power themselves or eat. . . The people have had - have this type of experience before with pets in their home so they're still giving them names. In fact, Georgia Tech just did a study, and they found that two-thirds of the people who are Roomba users actually give them names.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php
NPR - Talk of the Nation - April 25, 2008
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Computerized Combat Glove
. . .Researchers at MIT, the University of Toronto, and the Georgia Institute of Technology have been working on systems that focus on detecting hand and arm movements by using accelerometers, gyroscopes, and other high-tech sensors. . . .Thad Starner, an associate professor of computing at Georgia Tech and one of the pioneers of wearable computing systems says that RallyPoint's real innovation is sensors that are light enough for soldiers' use and can be sewn into a glove. Land Warrior, a wearable computer system built by the U.S. Army last year, was full of cords, batteries, and hardware that weighed almost 17 pounds. "It was an overkill of features, and the military stripped it down to its most essential parts," says Starner. "Soldiers are adapting the technology to their needs." Starner says that by incorporating new types of sensors, like the track-pad-style mouse, into the glove, RallyPoint is creating something novel. The next step, he says, would be to make the glove wireless and to design it so that it doesn't impede soldiers' tactile sensations. www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx
Technology Today - April 28, 2008
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Ga. Tech Professor to Lecture About Wearable Computers
Thad Starner, an associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Interactive Computing, will present a lecture about wearable computers Wednesday at Berry College. “Reading Your Mind: Interfaces for Wearable Computing” begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, in the Berry College science auditorium. Admission to this Sigma Xi Research Symposium Lecture is free and open to the public. Starner is best known for his accomplishments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his work helped lay the groundwork for the field of wearable computing. news.mywebpal.com/partners/680/public/news896076.html
Rome News Tribune - April 22, 2008
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GVU at the College of Computing 17th Awards Celebration
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant
Valerie Henderson-Summet
Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant
Grant Schindler
The Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
Michelle Kwasny
The Raytheon Faculty Fellowship
Keith Edwards
The Dean’s Award
Jim Foley
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Nerds With Nerf Guns Strike Raw Nerves
. . .Games like Humans vs. Zombies have been popular on college campuses for decades. A game called Assassin requires players to sneak up on opponents and pretend to kill them. "Colleges are kind of perfect for this sort of thing," says Ian S. Bogost, an assistant professor of literature, communication, and culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology who studies gaming cultures. "They're closed, well-defined spaces, and people living on them have a whole lot of free time." But the games have been under new scrutiny ever since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he says, scrutiny that has intensified after recent incidents of campus violence.
chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i33/33a00601.htm (Subscription Required*)
Chronicle of Higher Education - April 25, 2008
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