My Virtual Patient Speaks

by Maureen Ngugi

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Week 1: May 30 - June 5, 2010

I arrived on Sunday evening in time to get settled in and attend the dinner Dr. Hodges had arranged for the DREU students that arrived that day. We ate at a Mexican restaurant and the food was delicious. I also got to meet the other students participating in the program. After dinner, Dr. Hodges dropped us back at the apartments on campus where we were staying. Dr. Hodges staff did all the leg work to secure the apartment on campus and all I had to do was show up and pay for the lodging!

My first week at Clemson University was spent participating in studies, getting familiar with the specifics of some of the applications we will use over the course of the project (C++, MySQL - using XAMPP, SAPI, Di Guy, and Dragon) as I will be working on implementing the database for the project.

To help with familiarization, I began working on tutorials the Ph. D. students Lauren & Toni compiled. I also participated in our weekly meetings, and listened to the presentations Lauren & Toni put together.

Hours worked ~ 40 hours

Week 2: June 6 - June 12, 2010

This week involved getting more familiar with the various software applications we will be using for the project. I had tutorials to complete which gave me the hands on experience on using the applications.

I attended short presentations to further get familiar with the applications. I will also attend a weekly seminar by a different professor discussing their work, projects in progress or projects that have been completed. This should give me exposure to other research projects which could potentially interest me.

One tutorial involved writing code to get text to speech to work. So here when I typed in a question on the terminal, the database was queried and the corresponding answer was voiced out by the program (text to speech).

I also used Dragon NaturallySpeaking (speech recognition) which allowed me to train the application with my voice, such that what I spoke was turned into text. Now I just need to get it to get the corresponding answer from a question from the database.

I will start working on Di Guy, the human simulation software. This is for the virtual character and I will work on getting the characters facial expressions appear more human. This should be interesting.

One of the Ph.D. students (Toni) organized a weekly volleyball game for all of us in the program. I couldn't attend this week's game but heard it was really fun from the other students that did. I definitely plan on participating next week! During the week, I also walked around campus (Clemson is huge) to get familiar with the place. They have beautiful landscaping and a botanical garden that's very relaxing to walk through. Dr. Hodges also began his weekly dinner's on Tuesday at his home, where every week, a different array of delightful dishes was served. It was a great way for everyone to get to know each other outside the lab.

Hours worked ~ 40 hours