• Aware Home: An interdisciplinary team of GVU Center members is conducting a project called the Aware Home Research Initiative, with a specific focus on technologies to help senior adults live independently at home. Aware Home technologies are based on sensors that feed information to computers, giving a home an awareness of the residents' activities so it can support their needs.
The Aware Home project, led by Associate Professor of Computing Gregory Abowd, is based in the Broadband Institute Residential Laboratory, a three-story home adjacent to the Georgia Tech campus.
Among the projects under way at the Aware Home are technologies to aid memory and regular communication with relatives and friends. Memory boosters include a visual display system in the kitchen to remind interrupted cooks where they left off, an audiovisual tracking system to help find lost objects, the Living Memory Box of digital still photos and visual artifacts, and the Family Video Archive to manage digital home movies. Communication tools include the Digital Family Portrait, which delivers sensor-derived, graphical information from the senior adult's home to the adult child's residence.
• VR Meditation: A project that may make meditation easier to learn and more appealing is a virtual-reality-based "meditation chamber" created by GVU members Diane Gromala, an associate professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture, former Professor of Computing Larry Hodges and College of Computing research scientist Chris Shaw. The researchers are continuing to test the program with volunteers and are working with Hodges' company, Virtually Better, to further develop the program for potential commercialization. They are also studying its use in treating pain.
In its current form, the program is a 15-minute virtual experience in relaxation techniques and meditation. Users wear a head-mounted display with audio and video that guides them through a series of sunset and moonrise scenes and muscle relaxation exercises.
The system also monitors the users' respiration, pulse rate and sweat gland activity (a measure of calmness) to provide real-time biofeedback regarding the effectiveness of the virtual experience.
• VR Therapy: Using virtual reality (VR) technology to treat anxiety disorders – in particular, phobias – began in the early 1990s with the research of former and founding GVU Center member Larry Hodges, now the chairman of the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
With Emory University Professor of Psychiatry Barbara Rothbaum, Hodges conducted experiments using VR programs with head-mounted displays to treat such conditions as war-related traumatic stress syndrome and the fears of heights and flying.
Their groundbreaking research generated interest worldwide and led the researchers to found the Atlanta-based VR therapy company Virtually Better in 1998. The company develops and distributes VR therapy programs for use in private mental health practices around the world. Staff members also conduct federal research, including a new project aimed at treating drug addiction with VR therapy.
• Talking Heads: A user interface project aims to improve the information provided to software users within the programs they run. Associate Professor of Computing John Stasko and Associate Professor of Psychology Richard Catrambone are studying anthropomorphic interface assistants – basically "talking heads" – to guide software users. Their research is seeking to understand whether interface assistants, such as the Microsoft paper clip, can be genuinely helpful, and if so, how the assistant should look and act.
The researchers have conducted experiments where, from another room, they control a simulated assistant that is interacting with subjects.
"People have a more favorable opinion if they get useful help," Stasko says. "The paper clip is generally disliked. It's seen as inappropriate and incompetent. Talking heads are perceived as giving useful, competent help."
Stasko has also developed a user interface called InfoCanvas, which creates an abstract pictorial representation of Web-based information people want to monitor. The canvas is displayed on a separate monitor and looks much like a painting hung on a wall or a picture frame set on a desk.
• Weather Visualization: A real-time, three-dimensional weather visualization system being developed by GVU Center researchers will help severe weather researchers improve the timeliness and accuracy of forecasting the formation, path and possible effects of storms.
A team led by principal research scientists Bill Ribarsky in the College of Computing and Nick Faust in the Georgia Tech Research Institute is developing a computer-based system to view, interrogate and analyze large observational data sets. Data includes information from radar stations, severe weather detection software, high-resolution weather models, geographic information systems, satellites and aerial photography. These sources not only provide specific and timely weather information, but also data on terrain, building locations and eventually human activities, such as rush-hour traffic.
All of this data is being merged in a platform called the Virtual Geographic Information System (VGIS) previously developed by Ribarsky and Faust. The system runs on a personal computer and can be viewed on a monitor or large-screen projection.
Weather researchers will use the visualization system to improve storm detection software used by forecasters. And the National Weather Service may eventually use the system to help decide whether to issue watches and warnings.
• Architecture Prototyping: College of Architecture Professor Chuck Eastman collaborates with GVU members to apply computer-aided design and computer-aided modeling technology in architecture and construction. Such high technology is increasingly being used in architecture, and collaboration with the GVU Center has helped allow architecture to see what is coming and help make it happen, Eastman says. For example, the partnership has yielded rapid prototyping technology to build physical examples of faculty and student designs.
In a previous collaborative project with GVU researchers, Eastman developed an interactive technology on large-screen displays for architecture students. Several of the 60-inch, touch-sensitive displays are now used daily in the College of Architecture.
Users control the display by standing in front of the screen and dragging displayed items around it as they discuss projects with faculty and other students. The displays are used in architectural studio settings much like a computer lab. Eastman and his colleagues developed the displays from prototypes that several companies later developed into commercial display technologies.
• Electronic Learning Communities: The development of electronic learning communities based on the Internet is an area of GVU Center research by Associate Professor Amy Bruckman. Bruckman and her students have developed communities to teach creative writing, computer programming and math.
MOOSE Crossing (www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/moose-crossing/)
is an electronic learning community for children ages 9 to 13 to learn creative writing and computer programming skills. It is a world based on children's imaginations, Bruckman says.
Members of the community can create objects ranging from magic carpets to virtual pets. They can also build virtual rooms and cities, such as King Tut's Pyramid, the Emerald City of Oz, or Harry Potter's Hogwarts. Members get to meet and interact with children from around the world. The goal is to make learning fun and meaningful. Hundreds of teachers and students participate in MOOSE Crossing.
More recently, Bruckman and Ph.D. student Jason Elliott have created AquaMOOSE 3D
(www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/aquamoose/)
to pique the interest of high school math students. In AquaMOOSE, participants are fish, and they specify their motion in three dimensions mathematically. For example, they swim in a cosine in the x-plane and a sine in the y-plane to make a spiral. By combining math and art, AquaMOOSE's designers hope to help students with an interest in one area get excited about the other, they say.
The researchers have studied the use of AquaMOOSE in summer programs for gifted students and in pre-calculus classes. In early 2004, Bruckman and Elliott will conduct an after-school program at an Atlanta-area, arts-oriented school to see if the math/art connection can help increase students' interest in math.
• eClass: Associate Professor of Computing Gregory Abowd led a research team that developed eClass, formerly called Classroom 2000, to study the impact of ubiquitous computing on education. Researchers built a prototype classroom environment, including software, to seamlessly capture much of the rich interaction that occurs in a typical university lecture.
By capturing the different streams of activity in the classroom and presenting an easily accessible interface that integrates those streams, eClass reduces the need for mundane note-taking, allowing students to engage in and better understand the classroom discussion.
The researchers' ultimate goal is to revolutionize the classroom experience with a natural and useful capture, integration and access service, Abowd says. – JMS
For more information, contact Nancy Sandlin, GVU External Relations Director, 404-385-1252 or sandlin@cc.gatech.edu.
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Last updated: Dec.11, 2003
