PROJECTS
I'll be working on a project called Cable Labs. This research project is led by Dr. McMullen at the HCC Lab at Clemson University. Cable Labs is a project that makes use of the Microsoft Kinect in order for a human to interact with their cable box and TV. Dr. McMullen led a study where many participants suggested gestures or motions that they thought match with different commands to control your TV such as "channel up" and "channel down." Each participant was asked to create a gesture for 25 different commands. After generalizing the gestures for each command, it is our job to write code to make the Kinect recognize these gestures. When these gestures are recognized, your TV will respond accordingly. I am on the gesture recognition team with three other graduate students and a DREU student. Writing the C# code with the Kinect 2.0 SDK is my main job for this research project.
This study was conducted to help determine natural gestures people would make to interact with different interfaces such as TV. With the knowledge of these natural gestures, we'll be able to make applications that use gestures very intuitive for new users to use. Applications that take this study's findings into account will make the transition into their applications much smoother than usual for their new users. An upward swiping gesture with the right hand, for example, was the natural gesture we determined for turning the volume up. There were 25 different actions that we generalized gestures for. Many of these generalized gestures were similar which may lead to future challenges.
I'll also be working on a project with Dr. Eugene that is based on a study done by Texas A&M. This study deals with texting and driving. We'll examine how different methods of mobile telecommunication effect drivers while driving. One of these methods is a called, "Voicing." Voicing is a technology that was developed at Clemson University by the Human-Centered Computing Lab. We'll observe the drivers driving while manually texting, Voicing, using Siri or Vlingo, and without any form of mobile telecommunication. My job on this project will be to program a microcontroller (Adruino Uno) that powers an Adafruit Neopixel LED light strip. This code is written in C++ in the Arduino IDE. The program will cause the LED lights to flash pseudo-randomly. The driver's reaction time to the pseudo-random flashes will help us measure the driver's level of focus on the road. I'll also be managing the screening of the participants who will participate in this study.
