Monitoring children’s developmental progress using augmented toys and activity recognition

Previous research has established the connection between the way in which children interact with objects and the potential early identification of children with autism. Those findings motivate our own work to develop "smart toys," objects embedded with wireless sensors that are safe and enjoyable for very small children, that allow detailed interaction data to be easily recorded. These sensor-enabled toys provide opportunities for autism research by reducing the effort required to collect and analyze a child’s interactions with objects. In the future, such toys may be a useful part of clinical and in-home assessment tools. In this paper, we discuss the design of a collection of smart toys that can be used to automatically characterize the way in which a child is playing. We use statistical models to provide objective, quantitative measures of object play interactions. We also developed a tool to view rich forms of annotated play data for later analysis. We report the results of recognition experiments on more than fifty play sessions conducted with adults and children as well as discuss the opportunities for using this approach to support video annotation and other applications.     

Mobile phones as computing devices: the viruses are coming!

Understanding existing threats against mobile phones helps us better protect our information and prepare for future dangers. Mobile phones have evolved from their roots as analog walkie-talkies to full-scale Internet-enabled computers. Today, mobile phone handsets are arguably the dominant computer form factor consumers purchase. But having such powerful networked computers leads to a new class of malware: viruses, worms, and trojans specifically designed for the mobile environment. Merely enumerating known attacks doesn't help us understand all possible threats. Instead, we present a taxonomy of attacks against mobile phones that shows known as well as potential attacks.     

The role of speech input in wearable computing

Speech recognition seems like an attractive input mechanism for wearable computers, and as we saw in this magazine's first issue, several companies are promoting products that use limited speech interfaces for specific tasks. However, we must overcome several challenges to using speech recognition in more general contexts, and interface designers must be wary of applying the technology to situations where speech is inappropriate.     

Thick clients for personal wireless devices

A thin-client approach to mobile computing pushes as many services as possible on a remote server. Technology trends indicate, however, that an easy route to improving thin-client functionality will be to add disk storage, RAM, and a more powerful CPU. Thus, thin clients will rapidly become multipurpose thick clients. With time, users may come to consider their mobile system as their primary general-purpose computing device, maintaining their most-used files on the mobile system and relying on their desktop systems primarily for larger displays, keyboards, and other nonmobile interfaces     

A wearable computer-based American sign Language Recogniser

Modern wearable computer designs package workstation-level performance in systems small enough to be worn as clothing. These machines enable technology to be brought where it is needed most for the handicapped: everyday mobile environments. This paper describes a research effort to make a wearable computer that can recognise (with the possible goal of translating) sentence-level American Sign Language (ASL) using only a baseball cap mounted camera for input. Current accuracy exceeds 97% per word on a 40-word lexicon.     

Wearable devices: new ways to manage information

Although the Information Age has many upsides, one of its major downsides is information overload. Indeed, the amount of information easily pushes the limit of what people can manage. This conflict drives research to seek a solution to humanity's information woes. As computers have shrunk from room size to palm size, so they have also moved from being passive accessories, such as laptops and personal digital assistants, to wearable appliances that form an integral part of our personal space. Wearable computers are always on and accessible. As the computer moves from desktop to coat pocket to the human body, its ability to help manage, sort, and filter information will become more intimately connected to our daily lives. The paper discusses the principles of wearable computers