This blog hosts weekly news about the Texas A&M University Sketch Recognition Lab. SRL is directed by Dr. Tracy Hammond, Director, IEEI and professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department. More information about the lab can be found at http://srl.tamu.edu
The 2015 ACM Intelligent User Interfaces Conference in Atlanta, Georgia marked the convention's 20th annual event. This year, the convention was held from March 29th to April 1st.
Dr. Tracy Hammond, the director of the Sketch Recognition Lab, attended and presented at IUI. Furthermore, SRL would also like to extend congratulations to Seth Polsley and Trevor Nelligan for winning Best Poster at the conference!
The annual meeting of the community, as described by IUI’s website, “serves as a premier international forum for reporting outstanding research and development on intelligent user interfaces.”
It is where the Human-Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence communities meet. However, IUI is always interested in related fields of study such as cognitive science, design, arts, psychology, and everything in between.
In her presentation at the conference, Dr. Hammond discussed multiple computer science and engineering concepts.
(Dr. Hammond during her presentation)
Between Dr. Hammond presenting and discussing the possibility of co-hosting IUI 2019 in Texas, the trio had discussions with future and past conference organizers John Donavan, Henry Lieberman, Yolanda Gil, Michell Zhou, and others. Even with schedules so jam-packed, the SRL team found time to relax and talk about leisure topics while at IUI.
Of course, they found ways to poke fun at one another, as always.
“Well, your shoes aren't completely apocalyptic,” Nelligan, the SRL's resident fashion guru, summarized to Polsley as they left the airport with Dr. Hammond. “Your hoodie could be less baggy.”
The jokes and fun also overflowed into Polsley and Nelligan’s interview about their IUI experience.
While at the conference, they presented a winning poster on Mechanix as a team.
“Yes,” Polsley answered instantly when asked if they presented as a duo. “He sang bass and I sang the rest.”
“There is a full sextet that is the entire authorship of the paper, but they weren’t all there,” Nelligan added.
The remaining authors of the paper, to whom Polsley and Nelligan expressed their gratitude toward, were Jaideep Ray, Dr. Michael Helms, Dr. Julie Linsey, and Dr. Tracy Hammond.
“It was actually nice presenting as a pair,” Polsley added on. “Because we could move away and see some other posters.”
“And if one of us got in trouble the other person could help out,” Nelligan expanded.
(Trevor Nelligan [left] and Seth Polsley [right] the day before the conference)
The judges and spectators that visited the poster and discussed Mechanix with Nelligan and Polsley were impressed with the program and the research presented.
Mechanix is a sketch-based tutoring system for engineering students about subjects that involve a lot of hand-written work. Just as students would with pen and paper, Mechanix has practice problems and instructor-inserted assessments for users to draw in by using a tablet.
The program uses sketch recognition to understand the relationship between geometric shapes and force indicators input by the user. It can then evaluate whether a student’s work is correct and, if not, where the student made a mistake. This allows Mechanix to give personalized feedback to the student about their work – something that is near impossible for an instructor to do for every single student in a large class. More about Mechanix can be found here at the SRL website.
“IUI was fantastic – we met a lot of really smart people there,” Nelligan began before talking about one particular dinner setting as an example of networking at the conference. “It was really cool, eating at this super fancy restaurant with a table full of field leading researchers, geniuses, and really cool people in general. It was like out of a movie.”
“The thing that I learned from IUI is that graduates and undergraduates should publish as much as possible,” Polsley continued. “It was such a huge opportunity. We got to meet so many top people. It was a very, very valuable experience.”
Nelligan and Polsley went on to agree that while winning best poster presentation was validating to their work and exploring Atlanta was a fun experience, the biggest takeaway they had from IUI was getting to know and connecting to experts and leaders in their field of work and seeing what other innovations are happening.
“Dr. Hammond is an incredibly supportive advisor,” Polsley complimented as Nelligan nodded his agreement. “Dr. Hammond wants students to show their work and go to conferences. If you have a presentation at a conference, she will get you there.”
Director Dr. Tracy Hammond and the members of the Sketch Recognition Lab congratulate Vijay Rajanna for winning the Best Student Paper Award at MobiHealth 2015 for his submission, Let Me Relax: Toward Automated Sedentary State Recognition and Ubiquitous Mental Wellness Solutions, written by Vijay Rajanna, Folami Alamudun, Dr. Daniel Goldberg, and Dr. Hammond.
MobiHealth 2015 was held over October 14 – 16th in London, United Kingdom. Endorsed and organized by the European Alliance for Innovation, 2015 marked the 5th EAI International Conference on Wireless Mobile Communication and Healthcare, titled this year as "Transforming Healthcare through Innovations in Mobile and Wireless Technologies."
(Vijay Rajanna in London for MobiHealth 2015)
Rajanna’s paper encompasses his work on a mobile application to improve workplace productivity while reducing physical exertion and sedentary work life. At one point or another, everyone has experienced an angry associate, racing against deadlines, only being able to find a pen when what is needed is a pencil, and technical difficulties. While these are all examples of life stressors that may seem little, when someone is under fire in a work environment, little things can build upon one another to become overwhelming enough that employee productivity decreases due to mental stress.
“Because of
technological advancements, most of our working style is becoming sedentary,”
Rajanna stated as he explained the motivation behind the paper. “Inactivity,
ultimately, results in anxiety, depression, and hypokinetic diseases. We wanted
to come up with a solution, specifically, for people who work in an office for
long hours.”
Using the combination of a smartwatch and smartphone, Let Me Relax seeks to increase calmness and stress reduction through simple relaxation techniques that can be used in the workplace to take a short break from everyday hardships. Let Me Relax breaks up the sedentary work day with short relaxation techniques that allow workers to breathe and tap out of daily struggles for a few moments before re-entering the fray. Rajanna’s experimentations with his application showed that subjects who followed the relaxation techniques tended to have an increased activity level at work as well as reduced mental stress.
“These results suggest that repeated interventions, driven by an intelligent activity recognition system, is an effective strategy for promoting healthy habits, which reduce stress, anxiety, and other health risks associated with sedentary workplaces,” Rajanna wrote in his paper’s abstract.
Rajanna took the time to describe what set MobiHealth apart from other conferences that he has attended. Unlike other conferences, where research and projects are highly diverse in regard to topics, MobiHealth only focuses on research regarding mobile and wireless healthcare. It is completely tailored to healthcare and medical work using mobile devices. Everyone who attends the conference is in the same area of research as one another, which makes networking and contact connection much easier.
"You will never, ever get bored attending any presentation," Rajanna commented about the similar interests and areas of everyone at the conference. "I ended up going to pretty much all the presentations over three days. Everything that I listened to, I was able to connect to and was able to learn from that."
Of course, when asked what the most memorable part of the conference was, Rajanna smiled and laughed.
"I knew we put a lot of effort into the paper," he began. "We wanted to get a lot of good work done, and the best part is that we won the Best Student Paper Award. I never expected that, but I was so happy."
Rajanna went on to explain that his surprise partially stemmed from the fact that there were top medical and technological schools represented at the conference. He was overjoyed and shocked when it was announced that his paper had won.
(Tower Bridge in London. Photo by Vijay Rajanna)
Moving forward, Rajanna learned a lot and made multiple contacts from attending the conference that will directly influence his healthcare work with Let Me Relax. For example, one project presented at the conference that Rajanna found particularly interesting was the new, updated sensors used in mobile devices. These sensors, which are not yet available, are a technological means of measuring physiological signs. He also enthusiastically spoke about how many application and wearable sensor technology projects were presented at MobiHealth - one of which was being used to measure fatigue in drivers.
"The best part is networking - I got the contact information from a lot of people. After I got back, I sent emails to all of them and am still in contact with them," Rajanna stated.
Also unlike many other conferences, MobiHealth has both researchers and practitioners (in this case, doctors) that attend and do presentations. Instead of only having a scope on research, MobiHealth is more focused than other conferences Rajanna has attended on practice and solving health issues. Furthermore, it was interesting to Rajanna to meet real-life users of the technology, instead of only meeting other researchers and experts.
While attending MobiHealth, Rajanna was sure to not just experience all work and no play in the UK. He took time to travel and experience all he could of the United Kingdom.
"My expectation of the UK was completely different," Rajanna stated, explaining that he did not expect the large crowds of people that he saw in London. While also giving praise to the London Underground for its efficiency and ease of use for travel, regardless of how many people used it.
(Vijay Rajanna at the Prime Meridian)
"The last day of the conference was finished quite early, so I got to go to a few places," he continued. "I got to visit Tower Bridge and a couple of important places in London. But one of the places that was most interesting for me was something I could really experience and something I could connect to: visiting the Prime Meridian."
Rajanna explained that, while it is more of a symbolic line, the experience of having one foot in the west hemisphere and one in the east hemisphere of the world was still very impactful to him.
"London is a lively city," Rajanna concluded. "I used to go out around eleven or twelve at night, some days I was working and got up at three in the morning and would go out to get coffee. The streets were still busy. You still see people up and walking around. It's alive."
(London at a distance. Photograph by Vijay Rajanna)
The CHItaly 2015 conference was held in Rome, Italy from September 28th to 30th. This marked the 11th bi-annual conference and was themed “Public, private, and community-based interaction.” The scope of CHItaly encompassed the diversity of research in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI).
Representing the Sketch Recognition Lab and Director Dr. Tracy Hammond at CHItaly 2015 was Seth Polsley and Harish Vangavolu, the graduate mentor and the leader of the Frontier Capstone team, respectively. The duo presented the capstone project completed over the spring semester. Frontier worked on creating an application for web browsers which would allow for website history to be tracked in a non-linear fashion. Presently, browsers can only track one line of history, not multiple.
(Vangavolu presenting Frontier at CHItaly)
Imagine painting a dotted line – each dot represents a site that a user goes to while using a browser. Now imagine drawing a solid line off of one of the dots, covering all sequential dots after it, and stretching past the end of the original dotted line. This is how browser history works, now. Users can use the back and forward navigations in a browser to return to previous pages. But when they click a different link in the middle of their history, all information from that point onward is rewritten – which can be incredibly annoying when someone is, for example, researching information for a project or work.
Of course, if the original dotted line was not a line at all, but a series of pathways stemming off of one another – each connected, but not dependent on one another – users would not lose information by changing the pattern, they would just create another, branching pathway. This is the aim of Frontier: taking the linear history map and creating a more intuitive and graphically-based map. The application’s design is much like a circle graph, where each circle represents a visited site connected by lines to other circles.
“I really enjoyed the connections I made with the international CHI research community,” Polsley commented. “As someone who hasn't done a lot of travel prior to graduate school, I think this sort of event is fairly eye-opening in that it makes you think about research and development in a global perspective.”
(Vangavolu and Polsley having dinner at CHItaly with other researchers)
He went on to say that he recommends publishing and travel to anyone with the option – there are people around the world in the HCI field that are working to solve similar problems faced in the USA. Having the opportunity to meet and talk to experts from around the world opens doors to a variety of future careers and research.
Moving forward from his experiences at CHItaly, Polsley stated that he now considers how his work impacts not just those around him – both at Texas A&M University and the nation – but a global community. It was an eye-opening experience.
“It's great experience. Being in Rome wasn't too bad either,” Polsley joked. “We explored all over that city! It was a lot of fun all around.”
While he joked further about how difficult it was to find natural, un-carbonated water and how impressed he was by the cuisine of Italy, Polsley was moved by his experience in a city as old and full of culture – both from the past and present – as Rome. He was struck by each experience he had and could not decide which was more impactful, seeing the Pope speak or exploring the Colosseum.
(Vangavolu and Polsley at the Colosseum)
“Here in the U.S., we have a couple hundred years of history, but when you walk around an ancient city like Rome, literally everywhere you turn, you're looking at buildings and streets that have thousands of years of history,” he explained. “I was amazed by everything I saw, from every magnificent church to ancient, winding roads.”
Reflecting again on the experience of the CHItaly conference, Polsley praised them on bringing in other European researchers and experts to showcase their work as well as exemplifying a heightened global awareness, to a degree which he was unused to seeing in America.
“CHItaly is a fairly small CHI community. They do a lot of great work, especially in education from what I saw,” Polsley concluded. “It is a great community, and I learned a lot.”
Members of the Sketch Recognition Lab and Director Dr. Tracy Hammond are always busy - the stack of research, projects, and classes can almost seem unending. However, the time consuming schedules of SRL members are not so jam-packed to keep them from enjoying time with one another during lab outings.
Some outings consist of going out to movies like The Avengers or The Martian, eating together, or going for coffee. Some are more publicly situated than others. Recently, SRL went out to Grand Station in College Station to spend an evening bowling with one another. Grand Station has become a top pick for lab outings, when it’s convenient for a larger group.
(SRL Bowling outing - Left to Right: Katya Borgos-Rodriguez, Josh Cherian, Dr. Tracy Hammond, Hannah Conrad, Raniero Lara-Garduno, Jung-In Koh; Bottom: Angelica McMurty)
While most lab outings are spontaneous times for everyone to relax and enjoy some much needed downtime, the latest was also a farewell party to Katya Borgos-Rodriguez and Angelica McMurty, who helped Stephanie Valentine with KidGab updates and research over the summer, and Javier Anguas, Omar Garcia, Cristopher Cortes, and Aldo Haro (CANIETI Students, who were unfortunately unable to attend the bowling night).
While at Texas A&M University this summer, the CANIETI Students worked together on a project in the Sketch Recognition Lab. Their final prototype, called Smart Cap, is a hat which monitors the air quality and UV radiation that the wearer is exposed to and calculates Ultraviolet Index (UVI) and Air Quality Index (AQI). The cap is connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone, which then displays the findings.
Borgos-Rodriguez and McMurty, meanwhile, worked on new quizzes, drawings, plugins, and updates to KidGab. They also aided in summer Digital Friendship programs, hosted Digital Parties, and tracked information for KidGab until returning to their home universities.
(SRL Bowling Outing)
“I applied for the DRE Program. It was kind of a random encounter: I found it through a Facebook post. Someone posted it and I went ahead an applied and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best,” Borgos-Rodriguez explained how she found herself traveling from her home in Puerto Rico to Texas A&M University for the summer. “They assign you specific universities according to your interests.”
Once the DRE Program assigned her to Texas A&M University, Dr. Hammond contacted Borgos-Rodriguez via email with a description of projects that were available to work on over summer break. Stephanie Valentine, the creator of KidGab, was copied on the email because of her involvement with previous DRE students.
Borgos-Rodriguez mostly worked on new illustrations and styles for the cartoon avatars in KidGab. McMurty, on the other hand, mostly worked on new quizzes for KidGab members to take and participate in.
"My favorite thing about my summer experience," McMurty added later in the fall, "was to be able to work with really strong and amazing people, especially Stephanie [Valentine]."
SRL loved hosting every one of our summer students, working beside them, and seeing their research take life at TAMU. We hope to see them all again in the near future!
The annual Computer Science & Engineering
Career Fair and Poster Competition was held at Texas A&M University on September 8, 2015. Members of the Sketch Recognition Lab - both
graduate and undergraduate - presented their projects to experts and to future employers ranging from American Airlines to Facebook.
(Director of SRL, Dr. Tracy Hammond [left] and Stephanie Valentine [right] at the CSE Career Fair)
([Left to right] Swarna Keshavabhotla, Jung-In Koh, Seth Polsley, Anurag Garg, and Trevor Nelligan at the CSE Fair)
Among the posters of CSE students were many presenting SRL projects and student research.
Raniero Lara-Garduno showcased a poster about updated information regarding Smart Strokes, his project that allowed for the analysis and evaluation of digitalized neuropsychology tests. Normally done with pen and paper, Lara-Garduno aims to modernize the method used in these connect-the-dot tests to take advantage of sketch recognition tools and technology, which allows for greater understanding to come from the tests.
Josh Cherian presented his research on action recognition during cleanliness activities (for example, brushing teeth or washing hands). Currently, Cherian is focused on applying his findings and project to those in the elder community, who may have cognitive decline due to aging or illness. Using an Andriod app and a Pebble Smartwatch, Cherian was able to track and differentiate different movements and match them to cleanliness activities. This research can help aides keep track of patients who need help remembering whether or not they washed their hands or brushed their teeth.
(Josh Cherian at the IAP Poster Competition)
Siddartha Karthik's presentation was in regards to picture and sketch labeling. His goal is to create an effective and simple way to label, store, and retrieve drawings entered into programs via pen-and-touch technology. Karthik and SRL have already created an automatic drawing labeling program. It allows users to enter sketches into the program and receive a list of most probable labels based on what is recognized. Ultimately, this program would allow for more efficient organization and recall ability for hand drawings.
Also at the contest, Ayden Kim reported his work on classifying and assessing motor skills in children to predict whether they were ready for school. Previous research has shown that fine motor control is related to school and study readiness, and Kim aims to revamp the current motor 'Star Test' into a digital and touch interface, KimCHI. By drawing various, simple shapes, KimCHI evaluates whether a child's motor skills are 'mature' and ready for school and studies, or 'in training' and needing more work.
Presenting his new project at the poster competition was Vijay Rajanna. His research involves eye tracking during computer-human interaction (CHI). Using a gaze tracking device and a pressure pad-like device he engineered, Rajanna is working on creating a new way of using computers without the use of a traditional computer mouse. His new method of CHI would allow for more efficient computing and precise interaction with very little practice. While his work is still in the early stages of research and testing, Rajanna hopes that his future work will make CHI more interactive and less limited.
Swarna Keshavabhotla presented a poster on Persketchtivity. This project is a web-based application that aids in practice drawing geometric shapes for engineering students. Persketchtivity helps students by offering users outlines to trace using pen-and-touch technology. Once the user traces the shape, Persketchtivity shows the differences between the inputted sketch and the original outline. At the moment, Keshavabhotla is working on adding more advanced shapes and finessing the program.
(Keshavabhotla presenting at the IAP Poster Competition)
Purnendu Kaul presented his new research regarding Mechanix. Kaul is currently combining gaze-tracking technology and the intelligent tutoring system created in SRL (Mechanix) to better understand user's state of mind while solving problems. In Mechanix, students can practice drawing and solving truss problems and gain feedback on their work. By tracking their gaze while working, Kaul can see where a user's gaze lingers and/or returns to (for example, when a person reads part of a problem more than once or concentrates on just one word).
Jung In Koh showcased her work on gesture recognition and emoticons in regard to online expressiveness. Through interviews and online surveys, Koh is researching trends in intuitive gestures to describe common emojis. By recording interviews and using gesture tracking technology, Koh has found that there are five emoticons that coincide with a consistent gesture - for example, the thumbs up icon. Moving forward, Koh is interested in continuing her project to experiment in algorithms that allow for emojis to be connected to gestures.
Jaideep Ray's poster presentation was about his work in sketch matching, recognition, and retrieval. Ray's research is centered around the goal of more efficient image tagging - that is, a more efficient way to digitally classify and identify what a drawing represents. Instead of being identified by where lines intersect, Ray is working on applying an algorithm that focuses on sketch recognition through spatial markers and distance between lines. This would allow for more effective recall of images and objects in sketch recognition programs.
Paul Taele competed with a poster about his program, BopoNoto. As a tool for learning how to write languages that use zhuyin phonetic script, BopoNoto prompts users with an English spelling of a phonetic sound and recognizes the sketch that is input into the application. BopoNoto not only corrects the overall sketch, but also the stroke order, which is important to many non-Romanized languages. Taele's program allows users to learn how to correctly write in different languages, and his future work looks to better the recognition system as well as expand his program to other world languages.
David Turner and Matt Runyon worked in tandem to present a poster on CourseSketch. Their ongoing electronic gradebook is aimed to make a more intuitive, effective system for educators to use. CourseSketch would help educators program more advanced policies into the gradebook - such as late policies - that would automatically be applied to grades, help educators see grade trends, and aid students in determining how they are doing in their classes. Going forward, Turner and Runyon want to add innovative features to the system, such as graphic visualization of grade statistics, and use artificial intelligence to make a more advanced system.
(David Turner and Matt Runyon presenting at the CSE Career Fair)
SRL and Director Dr. Tracy Hammond are also excited
to congratulate Trevor Nelligan for winning first place in the poster
competition!!
(Left: Nelligan presenting his poster. Right: Dr. Hammond and Nelligan after the first place announcement)
Trevor presented a poster on Mechanix for the IAP contest. He talked enthusiastically to the judges about the educational interface. Mechanix, which is a sketch-based tutoring system for engineering students enrolled in introductory statics courses, allows for professors to give drawing assignments to hundreds of students at a time. The system gives question scenarios, recognizes geometric object drawings and force arrows, and gives instant feedback to users. This allows for students to both practice engaging assignments while also explaining any errors in calculations that happened along the way.
We are proud of everyone who participated in the poster event and
represented SRL at the career fair – here’s to a wonderful start to the
2015-2016 academic year!
Stephanie
Valentine has been a busy bee during Summer 2015.
Her
Digital Friendship program expanded to three Girl Scout summer camps and
will be hosting hundreds of new accounts. As daunting as the additions to
KidGab are, Valentine was up for the challenge.Despite
any obstacles that arose, Valentine was excited to expand Digital Friendship
and help more people by introducing them to her nonprofit, Wired Youth, which was founded with
the help of Dr. Tracy Hammond, the director of the Sketch Recognition Lab.
To
kick off the summer, Valentine hosted a digital party via her social media site
for children, KidGab. Celebrating with her in person was Jung-In
Koh, Katya Borgos-Rodriguez, Angelica McMurty, and Dr. Hammond. Invitations were sent to every girl scout that already
had an account set up to join in the party and chat with each other while
taking new quizzes and exploring new additions to the site as they were made in
real time.
(Stephanie Valentine and Katya Borgos-Rodriguez updating KidGab with new add-ons)
Before
she set out to obtain as many digital badges (the achievement trophies of
KidGab) at the virtual event, Dr. Hammond had to change her avatar’s clothes.
“We
can’t have the same outfit at a party,” she joked about her avatar’s likeness
to Valentine’s.
As
soon as everyone’s avatars were dressed for the party, the fun started once again. New drawings and
statuses were posted in exuberant numbers – so much so that Valentine had to
change the settings to show the last one thousand posts made by everyone, instead
of the previous 50.
Watching
everyone creating sketches to come to life for various prompts was like spectating
multiple games of Pictionary simultaneously. New creations and expressions
were digitally born and shared with a community of friends.
(Stephanie Valentine creating an account for Jung-In Koh)
While
everyone mainly worked independently of one another, the party laughed and grew
together. The gathering served as a way not only to critique KidGab, but also as
practice for adding people to the system.
Soon after the date of the digital party, Valentine and her summer assistants began the expansion of the Digital Friendship program to three new Girl Scout summer camps. "Seeing and hearing a bunch of kids scream and be excited about the program was one of my favorite parts of the summer," Borgos-Rodriguez later stated as she worked on updated looks and new illustrations for KidGab. Through the chaos of adding over a hundred new accounts over the span of a few summer months, the KidGab crew stayed positive and hosted more digital parties for KidGab participants everywhere to come together virtually to celebrate the new gifts that awaited them online.
The 2015 Student Research Week (SRW) at Texas A&M University began on March 24 and ended with an awards ceremony on March 27. Many students of the Sketch Recognition Lab, directed by Dr. Tracy Hammond, participated. SRL students won 10 awards; 5 awards went to undergraduates (see prior post) and 5 went to graduate researchers. This post describes the graduate awards. The following is a list of Sketch Recognition Lab Awards at TAMU Student Research Week 2015. Bolded are those from graduate students.
2015 Sigma Xi Interdisciplinary Award. TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. gRec: A Gesture Recognition Interface for CourseSketch. Gutierrez, A.**
2015 2nd Place Graduate Oral (Subject Area: Math, Statistics, Computer Science) TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. SmartStrokes: Evaluating Sketches from Neuropsychological Tests. Lara-Garduno, R.*
2015 2nd Place Graduate Poster (Subject Area: Medicine, Biomedical, Neuroscience) TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. Modeling Radiologists’ Visual Search Patterns during Mammographic Screening. Alamudun, F.*
2015 2nd Place Graduate Oral (Subject Area: Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Business, Education, Political Science, Economics) TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. CourseSketch. Turner, D.*
Folami Alamundun won 2nd Place for Poster in Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, and Neuroscience.
Alamundun’s poster, Modeling Radiologists’ Visual Search, visually presented his research pertaining to gaze data and radiologists looking at mammograms. Medical procedures are emotional enough for the patient and provider without the worry of human error and honest mistakes that may happen.
Using eye tracking devices strapped onto radiologists’ heads, Alamundun recorded where radiologists looked during a screening. His goal was to analyze and identify common habits of radiologists which could then be used to develop diagnostic tools, decision support, and better training methods.
(Folami Alamundun standing with his poster)
“In this experience, in particular, one of the judges I talked to was in health sciences,” Alamundun stated about what he took away from SRW. “She asked a very certain question that I just never thought about, so I had very interesting feedback. She gave me her contact information and she introduced me to someone who is working with similar ideas, but in a different domain. You get a chance to create a local network and collaborate with others who have similar interests to you.”
Winning 1st Place for Poster in Math, Statistics, and Computer Science was
Jaideep Ray, the second member of SRL who was awarded. In his poster,
titled Approximate Sketch Matching and Retrieval, Ray researched and created an algorithm-based program that could automatically recognize what a hand-drawn sketch is of. The program acts in a similar fashion to trying to find books or articles on certain topics via an online database.
For example, if
a person drew a pig, there are certain parts of the animal’s anatomy that almost
everyone draws – the iconic curly tail and a snout. Using basic geometric shapes,
the algorithm relates the parts of the picture to the whole image. So, once an image is input into the system, it searches for 'key terms' to identify what the user has drawn.
(Jaideep Ray [second from the left] holding his award with Seth Polsley, Harish Vangavolu, and Abram Gutierrez)
The third SRL member is Anurag Garg, who was awarded with 2nd Place for
Poster in Math, Statistics, and Computer Science.
His poster,
Optimizing Corner Finder, aimed at improving the performance of the ShortStraw algorithm introduced by Wolin et. Al in 2008. One issue that occurs in sketch recognition is finding corners in free-line drawings. ShortStraw takes the points of a stroke, recognizes them, and then uses the distance between the points to predict whether the points are from straight lines or corners. This makes coding and programming much easier.
Through analysis of Wolin’s corner finder algorithm, Garg found that there was gap between the run-times of
individual segementers and ShortStraw. After tests and further evaluation of
the process, Grag’s research resulted in an improved algorithm using
'parallelization techniques'.
Fourthly, David Turner was awarded 2nd Place for Oral Presentation in Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Business, Education, Political Science, and Economics.
CourseSketch, as described by Turner, is an online learning experience and system that allows for the submission of handwritten homework and a unique course management functionality.
“CourseSketch is a system to make education smarter,” Turner stated. “Our mission is to deliver an intuitive, as well as interactive, learning experience that simplifies instructor and student interactions.”
There were three driving motivations behind the creation of CourseSketch. Firstly, Turner was unsatisfied with the current state of education in regard to the long feedback loop between the learning of material and the evaluation and response given to students based on completed work. Secondly, while there are current web-based education platforms, such as eCampus, the online tools are limited in function, efficiency, and practicality. Finally, while its predecessor, Mechanix, aided in the resolution of the first two motivators, it was limited by which domains it could support.
Currently, CourseSketch has been used in an introduction to logic course and a mathematics course at Texas A&M University.
When asked about where he wants to see CourseSketch implemented in the future, Turner responded with a quick “Everywhere!”
“I believe this can improve how education is done,” he continued his answer. “Improving how people learn and integrating technology to make education ‘smarter.’”
The fifth member of SRL to be awarded for his research was Raniero Lara Garduno, who won 2nd Place for Oral Presentation in Math, Statistics, and Computer Science. His project, Smart Strokes, is a digitalization of traditional, sketch-based neuropsychology tests. By digitalizing the tests, Smart Strokes allows for a more thorough evaluations – including information that could not normally be gathered by pen-and-paper tests, such as the age of the patient. Since the previous post published about Smart Strokes, Lara Garduno has been working on interface changes and improvements requested by his neuropsychologist consultant, Dr. Nancy Leslie. “For instance, I changed the way patient IDs are generated, from a random 16-digit number to a format that is used by neuropsychologists in the field,” he commented. “This is the kind of feedback that is very valuable for us as the developers of software intended for other fields, as these details are the difference between a novelty application and one that is actively used by the intended field.” Looking toward the future, Lara Garduno wishes to develop a way to define what it means to be ‘unhealthy’ as it can be seen in sketches. That can then be integrated into the program, allowing it to identify problems right after the patient has taken the test. This would speed up the process of medical staff being able to identify problem areas for patients and make a diagnosis. “We are also vastly interested in deriving information about humans, not just patients, through these tests,” Lara Garduno added when talking about the motivation behind Smart Strokes. “We believe we still haven't discovered just how much these tests can reveal about us as humans, and digitizing the tests and performing modern sketch recognition on the sketches gives us far more powerful tools to take that particular type of research to the next level.”
Congratulations to everyone who won awards at SRW! Thank you to everyone who participated!
The 2015 Student Research Week (SRW) at Texas A&M University marked its 18th poster and presentation extravaganza over the days of March 24th through March 27th. The Sketch Recognition Lab, directed by Dr. Tracy Hammond won 10 awards at the annual event; five of these awards were awarded to undergraduates taking capstone or senior research credits.
The following is a list of Sketch Recognition Lab Awards at TAMU Student Research Week 2015. Bolded are those from undergraduate students working with lab director Dr. Hammond.
2015 Sigma Xi Interdisciplinary Award. TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. gRec: A Gesture Recognition Interface for CourseSketch. Gutierrez, A.**
2015 2nd Place Graduate Oral (Subject Area: Math, Statistics, Computer Science) TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. SmartStrokes: Evaluating Sketches from Neuropsychological Tests. Lara-Garduno, R.*
2015 2nd Place Graduate Poster (Subject Area: Medicine, Biomedical, Neuroscience) TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. Modeling Radiologists’ Visual Search Patterns during Mammographic Screening. Alamudun, F.*
2015 2nd Place Graduate Oral (Subject Area: Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Business, Education, Political Science, Economics) TAMU Student Research Week, SRW 2015. CourseSketch. Turner, D.*
The Sketch Recognition Lab enthusiastically extends its congratulations to members and groups of the senior capstone course, taught by the Director of the Sketch Recognition Lab, Dr. Tracy Hammond, who were awarded for their innovative projects.
(From left to right: Jaideep Ray, Harish Vangavolu [for Frontier], and Abram Gutierrez)
Held by the Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) in tandem with the Office of Graduate Studies, Vice President for Research, Department of Student Life, and Undergraduate Programs & Academic Services, SRW celebrates and showcases student research in the form of posters and oral presentations.
Moving for a moment away from the academic side of SRW, it is also important to note that the week is specifically an aggie operated event – graduate students initiate the event by planning and organizing it. This allows for the community feeling of support generated by students at the event – competitors, judges, and sight-seers alike. As described on SRW’s website, it is a place where academic areas “are connected in hopes to spark collaboration, discover common ground, and challenge students, faculty, and staff at Texas A&M to consider the importance of research in our community and world.” This striving for a place where students and faculty can come together and share research and support across diverse areas of study was the main driving force behind the theme of the event – Connecting Ideas.
As with all competitions, an awards ceremony is held on the evening of the final day of SRW. It came as a pleasant surprise that SRL and the senior capstone groups placed numerous times in various areas. Abram Gutierrez, SRL undergraduate senior, won first place for Undergraduate Poster in Math, Statistics, and Computer Science and was also given the SigmaXI Interdisciplinary Award. “I was quite surprised,” Gutierrez commented. “I wasn’t expecting
it, actually.”
Under the mentorship of Paul Taele, David Turner, and Dr. Tracy Hammond, Gutierrez was doing a single person research project on this topic. gRec, his project, is an interface that allows people to control PowerPoint
presentations with gesture recognition (hence the play on the name). The end
goal of the gRec is to incorporate it into CoreSketch lecture modules to make a
more natural teaching environment.
By using hand gestures, a user will be able to advance slides, go
back in a presentation, stop a command, play an embedded video, and click on a
hyperlink. This allows for a presentation experience that is not weighed down
by having to manually control the PowerPoint.
“People typically like to use their gestures in conversations,
because it helps demonstrate points more clearly,” he stated. “But sometimes
you’re restricted by some of the hardware, like you may have to stick to a
keyboard – you can’t necessarily move around and be passionate about your
topic.”
gRec would, then, create a natural user-interface. A presenter
would not have to use a hand-held device or have pointer gestures to control their
slides. They would just have to use the registered gestures that are translated
into commands.
“If I close my hand, that will be the equivalent of putting a pen
down on a sketch pad,” Gutierrez explained the recognition process. “It will
read the gesture of a closed fist and when you open your hand, it’s like taking
the pen off. Once it stops scanning, it will consolidate all the points it
collected and send it to a processor.”
“I’m a graduating senior,” he began when asked about the future of
gRec. “So I won’t be able to see it to its full scale. What I’m trying to do is
make the framework open, so that students of future generations can go ahead
and build upon the framework and improve it, speed it up.”
Fire Mongooses, a senior capstone group advised Dr. Hammond and KidGab creator Stephanie Valentine, was awarded second place for Undergraduate Oral Presentation in History, Literature, Fine Arts, Communication, Languages, and Philosophy. The largest capstone group of the spring semester, Fire Mongooses is comprised of mentor Stephanie Valentine, TA Cassandra Oduola, and students Joshua Privett, Harry Zhang, Frank Tian, Matthew Carrasco, Thomas Mulholland, and Eliezer Cabrera.
“We are taking a previous project called KidGab, which is a safe social media for kids, and expanding it to include moderation,” Thomas described Fire Mongooses’ project. “Things like content flagging, word filter, and bully control.” The bully control moderation is able to find negative posts on the site and automatically delete them.
When asked about how they celebrated their award, Privett responded. “We’ll celebrate when we finish this. We’ve been working hard, so the presentation was kind of like ‘okay, let’s do this and get back to work.’ Even though we got second place, we’re not done with the project, so it’s hard to celebrate.”
The presentation and SRW provided an engaging and interesting break for the group. One which they were able to enjoy and gain positive experience and recognition for updating and crafting a socially aware project.
(Frontier giving their oral presentation)
Placing second for Oral Presentation in Math, Statistics, and Computer Science was the Frontier capstone group. Harish Vangavolu, Hayden Wood, and Joseph Newman make up the Frontier capstone group and are mentored by SRL member, Seth Polsley.
Frontier is working to revamp how
web browsers track history and stack websites.
“Instead of providing a linear list,
we’re providing a graph structure,” Wood began the explanation.
“If you go to a webpage ten
times,” Vangavolu added, “it will appear stamped in your history ten times. But
we can consolidate that into one node on a graph.”
“With the traditional back and
forth buttons,” Newman continued, “you are limited to just one route. So if you
go somewhere else, it overrides what it was previously, so you lose the links
to all other pages.”
So, imagine a blue dotted line.
This is the current way of tracking history on a browser – each dot is a
different webpage that was visited by a user. If you pick a dot, though, in the
middle of the line and begin to color over the rest of the dots in red, you’ve
lost the original, blue line.
Likewise, when a user goes uses
the back command in a browser to return to a previous page to click a different
link, all the information from that point and on is lost (for anyone who has
lost a webpage because of this system, you know how annoying it can be).
However, if the original dotted
line were not a line at all, but a series of circle-graphs, each connected to
but not dependent on one another, then users would not lose links by
backtracking on the graph, they would just create a new circle section.
“Browsers haven’t changed since
the 90’s,” Vangavolu stated, “and we have so much more computing power that can
be utilized.”
“It was a mutual criticism of
current web browsers,” Wood commented on the motivation behind the project. “There
are so many things that you think of when you navigate that you wish existed,
but were never developed. Then you get into a group like this and you really
start thinking about it.”
If time allows and the program
tests well, Frontier hopes to find a way to release and sell their new browsing
system as an application for browsers. Finally, Shoot Responsibly was awarded first place for Undergraduate Oral Presentation in Health, Nutrition, Kinesiology, and Physiology. Making up this group is Waylon Brown, Chandler Sauers, and Matt Bowersox. Mentoring them is Jory Denny.
“Our goal is to make gun training as safe as possible,” Brown explained. “Because anyone who wants to fire a weapon needs to go to a gun range and learn with an actual weapon that’s fireable which does include some safety concerns.”
Their solution? A virtual reality gun range and fire arm training program. Using an Oculus Rift and Hydra controllers, Shoot Responsibly creates a digital shooting range that takes a user through a similar gun safety routine as would be seen at a real-world range.
“It’s a fully working range,” Brown continued, moving the camera around the virtual shooting area as he spoke. “So you can actually fire at the targets.” The system critiques you if you point away from the range with your gun, and helps remind you about your safety.
When asked about the SRW experience, Bowersox commented, “I thought it was interesting, just seeing the different projects and how ours fit in with them.”
Shoot Responsibly was in the kinesiology and health category of SRW, making their project an odd man out. “Other projects were about diabetes and cultural things,” Bowersox laughed. “Ours was very different.”
“The main drawback is that it took us about two months to get these,” Bowersox added, gesturing to the controllers. “They’re really snazzy, but hard to find.”
“I feel like there is some actual at home potential,” Brown concluded. “You don’t have to spend money on ammunition and things like that.”
As for the future of Shoot Responsibly, the group hopes to see it implemented as an alternative to current gun training.
Hammond states "Guns are a part of Texas. I am excited to aid in the development of software to improve gun safety. I am super proud of the Shoot Responsibly team and all of my students."
