Begin forwarded message:
> Phone app lets the blind see through the crowd's eyes > > 16:09 11 May 2011 > Yasmina, a student at the University of Rochester in New York, is in the > mood for some soup. > She opens her cupboard where she knows the coconut milk she needs is > sitting on the shelf amongst other canned goods. Instead of reaching for > the right can, she hesitates. Yasmina is blind. She holds her iPhone to > the open cupboard, snaps a picture of the cans, makes an audio recording > of her question - "which one is the coconut milk?" - and double taps to > send off her query. > Approximately 45 seconds later her iPhone replies in an electronic > timbre: "The answer is the one on the right." "Great," Yasmina says, > feeling for the rightmost can, "that's awesome." > > Yasmina just used VizWiz > <http://hci.cs.rochester.edu/currentprojects.php?proj=vw> , a new mobile > phone application that provides the visually impaired with nearly > real-time solutions to everyday problems. VizWiz can, for example, help > the blind read their mail, coordinate their outfits, understand menus in > restaurants, check expiration dates and interpret street signs. The app > owes its swiftness and accuracy to a marriage of computer chips and good > old-fashioned human brainpower. > > Designing a computer program that can reliably recognize text and > distinguish objects in the real world has proven to be a massive > challenge for artificial intelligence researchers. To get around this, > the researchers behind VizWiz - a team consisting of computer scientists > from several universities, including the University of Rochester - > decided to outsource the task of problem-solving to people: > specifically, to Amazon Mechanical Turk's masses of online workers. > > To make sure users get answers as quickly as possible, the researchers > programmed an intelligent queuing system they call Quik Turkit to speed > things up. Quik Turkit recruits Mechanical Turk workers even as a VizWiz > user is taking a picture, so someone is always ready to answer an > incoming query. > > Eleven blind iPhone users tested out VizWiz, asking questions like: > "What denomination is this bill?", "Do you see picnic tables across the > parking lot?", and "What temperature is my oven set to?" > They received an average of three responses per query and waited an > average of 133.3 seconds for the first answer. The first answer received > was accurate or helpful in 71 of 82 cases. By the third answer, all > questions were correctly answered. > > In a second test, the volunteers got to use VizWiz 2.0, which includes > improved image processing techniques. Their response time was cut to an > average of 27 seconds. > > Most of the volunteers were excited about VizWiz and said they would pay > for the service. VizWiz could be "very useful," said one participant, > "because I get so frustrated when I need sighted help and no one is > there." > Here you go. A link which will bring more info about the product as well > as a video you can watch/listen to: > http://hci.cs.rochester.edu/currentprojects.php?proj=vw > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
