SBIR Phase I: Visual Information Delivery Robot for Visually Impaired Children

SBIR第一期：为视障儿童提供视觉信息传递机器人

• 批准号: 0945236
• 负责人: Yudaya Sivathanu
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: EN'URGA INC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-01-01 至 2010-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0945236&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Visual; Information; Delivery

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will evaluate the feasibility of a robotic system to detect and track a child's finger so that the scene that the child wishes to see can be displayed at high magnification on a monitor. There are two issues of intellectual merit that will be addressed during the Phase I work. The first issue is analyzing the pointing pattern of children. Since each person has his or her own pattern for raising an arm and pointing with a finger, the system requires a machine learning algorithm to adjust the decision from the system. This adaptive algorithm forms one of the key innovations that will be evaluated during the Phase I work. The second issue will be an adaptive zooming and scene segmentation algorithm. There are two primary commercial applications for the proposed visual information delivery robot. The first involves the education of visually impaired children. Most of research and products currently available for visually impaired children are focused on learning while they are sitting on the chair in front of the computer monitor. However, the proposed system captures the scene that the child points to in any location, thus bringing a dynamic tool to education. It is anticipated that such tools will have a significant commercial potential in schools for the visually impaired. The second commercial application is in assisting visually impaired adults with enhanced dynamic information when they are in a wheelchair. The commercial and societal impact of the proposed project is that it will enable visually impaired children and adults to enhance their quality of life by adding a dynamic tool for visualizing near and far off objects. The algorithms developed during the Phase I research will also aid researchers in industrial automation with advanced robots.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）I阶段项目将评估机器人系统检测和跟踪儿童手指的可行性，以便孩子希望看到的场景可以在显示器上的高放大倍率上显示。在I阶段工作期间，将解决两个智力优点的问题。第一个问题是分析儿童的指向模式。由于每个人都有自己的模式来举起手臂并用手指指着，因此系统需要机器学习算法来调整系统的决定。这种自适应算法构成了I阶段工作中将评估的关键创新之一。第二个问题将是一种自适应缩放和场景细分算法。建议的视觉信息传递机器人有两个主要的商业应用。首先涉及对视力障碍儿童的教育。目前可用于视觉障碍儿童的大多数研究和产品都专注于学习，而他们坐在计算机监视器前的椅子上。但是，拟议的系统捕获了孩子在任何位置指向的场景，从而将动态工具带入了教育。可以预料，此类工具在目视受损的学校中具有巨大的商业潜力。第二个商业应用是在坐在轮椅上时，可以帮助视力障碍的成年人使用增强的动态信息。拟议项目的商业和社会影响是，它将通过添加一个动态的工具来可视化物体，使视觉上受损的儿童和成人能够增强其生活质量。在I阶段研究期间开发的算法还将帮助研究人员使用高级机器人进行工业自动化。