Research
Home and Health
Researchers are enhancing the quality of life while revolutionizing healthcare.
A number of projects are underway at the Aware Home, a specially constructed model residence near the Tech campus that serves as a realistic laboratory for testing in-home technologies. The research is primarily geared toward helping older people live at home longer, and includes computerized coaches to help people use home medical devices, motion sensors that track the occupant's level of activity, memory aids to help with daily activities and communications devices to facilitate contact with family, friends and medical professionals.
At the GVU Center, Associate Professor Thad Starner is involved in technologies to augment conversation between the deal and hearing. One such project is CopyCat, an instructive computer game for deaf children that improves their language development. Using innovative gesture-recognition technology, deaf children use sign language to interact with on-screen characters while improving their communication skills. Another project, Telesign, involves a mobile American Sign Language translator that can aid face-to-face communication between a hearing and deaf person when a translator is not available.
Professor Jack Rossignac is conducting research in shape editing for surgical planning in collaboration with Ajit Yoganathan, Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair in Bioengineering and Regents' Professor. The project, "Computer-Assisted Surgery for Fontan Repairs," focuses on impaired pulmonary blood flow and the development of tools to aid physicians in planning cardiac surgery for pediatric patients.
In partnership with Emory University, Associate Professor Ashwin Ram is developing imaging expert systems that are automatically and continually updated with the latest scientific and clinical knowledge for nuclear cardiac medicine.
Faculty from biomedical engineering, psychology and computing combined forces to initiate a project titled "Point of Care Support for Pediatric Clinicians Using Nomadic Computing." They are examining the impact of mobile computing devices on the quality of care.
Associate Professor Gregory Abowd is researching video-capture technology as it may be applied to performing Functional Behavior Assessments in schools. The assessments underpin the intervention plans for students determined to have autism. Abowd's work will allow educators to record important behaviors for later retrieval and review, and could help professionals spot nuanced behaviors that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Arts and Entertainment
New approaches to the creative process.
A robotic percussionist named Haile interprets what humans play and plays back the music with improvisation. The project team is headed by Director of Music Technology Gil Weinberg, and is designed to combine the benefits of computational power and algorithmic music with the interactivity and expression of acoustical playing.
GVU faculty Blair MacIntyre, Richard Catrambone, Jay Bolter and Maribeth Gandy study augmented reality using presence techniques. Presence is a concept to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of virtual environments. The AR project explores what this means in a mixed reality setting, how existing measurement techniques such as questionnaires and physiological sensing can be applied to AR applications, and whether existing data regarding immersion factors and presence translate to the AR domain.
Gaming
Innovating new game paradigms.
In collaboration with Turner Broadcasting, Associate Professor Irfan Essa is reusing Turner content through sample-based media synthesis and regeneration. These techniques can be applied to creating new content from Turner classic movies as well as re-purposing news content for multiple channels.
Associate Professor Blair MacIntyre and Professor Jay Bolter are collaborating on the Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit and evaluating its potential for prototyping multi-player, location-based games.
Assistant Professor Michael Nitsche's recent projects are set in the machinima studio he created. Machinima is an animation production technique that relies on images rendered by real-time 3-D engines such as computer games to create cinematic pieces of computer animation. The game engine effectively acts as a virtual film studio, providing access to virtual lighting, staging and camerawork. Nitsche's team has created several new machinima pieces as well as tools to support the production stages.
Also, Nitsche and another group are exploring the concept of Charbitat, creating interdependence of virtual characters and space by basing games on procedural spaces. These spaces are generated in runtime as the virtual character evolves with the game play.
GVU faculty Blair MacIntyre and Michael Mateas are developing a mixed-reality version of the game Facade and study the effects of real world presence in interactive gaming spaces. Facade is an interactive drama that employs the cutting edge of augmented reality interface technology to create an embodied, real-world, dramatic space inhabited by autonomous characters.
Security and Privacy
Ensuring the usability and usefulness of networked computing.
Human-centered home networking is one area of research for Associate Professor Keith Edwards and his team of graduate students. The group is interested in finding approaches to make it easy for ordinary homeowners to employ complex networking technologies.
Collaborative Work
GVU researchers are making work-life more effective, creative and energizing.
Assistant professors Bruce Walker and Frank Dellaert are involved in a project called "System for Wearable Audio Navigation," a device which combines GPS localization, sonification and computer vision technology to enable the visually impaired to navigate more reliably in familiar environments. The technology could also be useful for firefighters, soldiers, search and rescue workers and others who deal with visually challenging environments.
Professor John Stako leads a research group investigating various attributes of peripheral displays for conveying information at meetings. The group is developing visualizations to assist individuals in quickly catching up on what has been already discussed and what actions have occurred. The research also examines the kinds of content suitable for public displays, such as in the hallway or elevator, semi-public displays inside the meeting space and personal displays such as on a computer desktop or digital appliance.
Configuring devices and services to work together efficiently and appropriately is a universal challenge in ubiquitous computing - and the subject of research led by Associate Professor Keith Edwards. In an effort to give people more direct and intuitive control over the world of information that surrounds them, his team is exploring the intersection between physical cues and invisible systems. Elements such as physical proximity, shared surfaces, ambient light and relative orientation can be harnessed to both inform humans and provide a tangible handle for ephemeral relationships between devices and services.
Computer systems in the workplace have traditionally relied upon an application- and document-centric metaphor for the organization and storage of information. But this metaphor is often ineffective in exposing the relationships that exist among several pieces of information from different applications, people and places. New designs by GVU Director Elizabeth Mynatt's research team are designed to enhance the fluidity of collaborative activities in the workplace as work seamlessly transitions between individual and meeting spaces. Associate professors Keith Edwards and Rebecca Grinter are also involved in the effort, called "Transforming Meeting Spaces into Meeting Places."
Learning
Meeting the fundamental needs of learning for all ages.
Associate Professor Amy Bruckman is the principal in a project designed to stir interest in science among high school students. "Science Online" is an open-content, Internet-based science encyclopedia in which students collaborate in researching and writing entries. The project team views the effort as a way to help students understand scientific concepts, and regard science as an active discipline to which they can contribute.
GVU founding director Jim Foley leads an effort to create the Human-Centered Computing Education Digital Library. In addition to serving as a resource for students and faculty, the library provides a research platform for empirical work on digital library design. Foley's team is investigating alternative means of accessing, browsing and visualizing library content, and integrating more intelligent, user-friendly methods for metadata and document collection.
Several projects from a multitude of research fields were recently displayed at the GVU 15 Research Showcase in October 2007.
From 1994 to 1998, the GVU WWW User Survey has accumulated a unique store of historical and up-to-date information on the growth and trends in Internet usage. It was valued as an independent, objective view of developing Web demographics, culture, user attitudes, and usage patterns.
The GVU Tech Reports are papers published by researchers associated with the Center. We provide an archive of these documents as a public service to the academic community. Please note that some of the electronic versions may be missing figures which were cut and pasted into the hardcopy reports.
