and then read by the autofocus camera
included on the iPhone, is one example
of how technology already embedded
in today’s devices simply needs to be
adapted to focus on accessibility issues,
such as by printing item-specific labels
on household items like coffee cups,
telephones, or even toothbrushes.
Meanwhile, robotics researchers
at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
are developing assistive robots to help
blind travelers. Starting with a humanoid robot called Baxter made by Rethink Robotics of Boston, the researchers modified Baxter to provide both
physical and visual assistance at an information desk in a busy transit center
when human workers are not available.
The ultimate goal for the project is to
integrate the robot with a smartphone
navigation app and then, eventually,
to introduce mobile robots that could
physically guide blind people in a manner similar to guide dogs.
Pröll says for those dealing with disabilities, today’s largest hurdles are not
simply technological, but are related to
overcoming issues with interfaces. “We
have all the technology in place that is
needed to gather any signals you can
imagine from the body,” he says. “Of
course, I’m talking about brain-comput-er interface research and such, but generally, we can get so much data from any
body movements, to eye movement and
eye tracking. [But] it’s always an interfacing problem with existing applications.”
Pröll contends for those with severe disabilities such as ALS, traditional input and control interfaces
such as touchscreens and even voice
commands are impossible to use, and
require more sophisticated alternatives, such as eye tracking and brain-wave measurement.
Accessing Health
Kyle Rector, a graduate student at the
University of Washington, developed
a software application called Eyes-
Free Yoga to assist and guide blind
or sight impaired people into six yoga
positions, such as the Warrior I and
Tree positions. Eyes-Free Yoga uses
geometry to calculate the proper an-
gles needed to complete a yoga pose,
and then reads the person’s body po-
sitioning using the Kinect’s cameras
and skeletal-tracking technology. The
application compares the user’s body
vices, which led to the development of
a mobile app called HoverZoom. Hov-
erZoom is a finger-detection function
that significantly enlarges the area of
the keyboard under one’s finger to make
the underlying keyboard more readable
and easier to use. This enables people
who have issues with fine motor control,
such as Parkinson’s disease sufferers, to
more easily use the device since they do
not need to place their fingers directly
on a small surface to activate a key.
The app addresses a significant issue that likely will become more prevalent as the Baby Boomer generation
moves into old age: fading or failing
capabilities.
“We have a use-case where people
are used to using a smartphone now,
and don’t need glasses,” Pollmann
says. “But in five years, they may need
them in order to use the smartphone.”
Accessing Life
A key concern of both researchers and
educators has been the focus on technology for entertainment or productivity,
perhaps in lieu of focusing on tools that
help people with daily tasks and activities. While the growing use of technology in game consoles has helped drive
development of assistive technologies,
some researchers believe not enough is
being done to figure out how such technologies can be specifically adapted to
help those with significant disabilities.
“When we see we already have technology like the Kinect, which we use
for dancing games, it’s sad to see that
no one is thinking about how we can
put this technology to use for better
reasons,” says Markus Pröll, founder
of Xcessity Software Solutions, a Graz,
Austria-based developer of human-computer interaction technologies.
Pröll and his team developed assistive
technology using the Microsoft Kinect
that allows severely disabled people to access a computer completely hands–free.
By using the Kinect’s sensors to track a
person’s head movements and facial expressions, the movement impaired can
control the mouse-cursor and mouse
buttons without using their extremities.
Other developers also are working on
applications designed to address specific, real-world problems faced by those
with disabilities. Digit-Eyes, an iOS application that creates QR code labels
that can be affixed to everyday items
Milestones
2 Papers Share
Dijkstra Prize
The E. W. Dijkstra Prize
Committee granted the 2015
Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in
Distributed Computing jointly
to two papers:
˲ Michael Ben-Or, “Another
Advantage of Free Choice: Completely Asynchronous Agreement Protocols,” in Proceedings
of the Second ACM Symposium
on Principles of Distributed
Computing, pages 27-30, August
1983. http://dl.acm.org/citation.
cfm?id=806707
˲ Michael O. Rabin, “
Randomized Byzantine Generals,”
in Proceedings of Twenty-Fourth
IEEE Annual Symposium on
Foundations of Computer Science, pages 403-409, November
1983. http://bit.ly/1Hwxtdh
In these papers published
in close succession in 1983,
Ben-Or and Rabin started
the field of fault-tolerant
randomized distributed
algorithms, according to the
prize committee.
Ben-Or and Rabin were
the first to use randomness to
solve a problem, consensus in
an asynchronous distributed
system subject to failures, which
had provably no deterministic
solution. In other words, they
were addressing a computability
question and not a complexity
one, and the answer was far
from obvious.
Ben-Or and Rabin’s
algorithms opened the way
to a large body of work on
randomized distributed
algorithms in asynchronous
systems, not only on consensus,
but also on both theoretical
problems, such as renaming,
leader election, and snapshots,
as well as applied topics, such
as dynamic load balancing,
work distribution, contention
reduction, and coordination in
concurrent data structures.
The Edsger W. Dijkstra
Prize in Distributed Computing
is given for outstanding papers
on the principles of distributed
computing, whose significance
and impact on the theory and/
or practice of distributed
computing has been evident
for at least a decade. The prize
includes an award of $2,000,
sponsored jointly by the ACM
Symposium on Principles
of Distributed Computing
(PODC) and the EATCS
Symposium on Distributed
Computing (DISC).