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CMU high tech aims higher for blind, deaf - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Running his hand along the wall, Joe Wassermann quickly found the smooth, white tag.
After scanning it with a handheld computer, the blind man instantly had the layout of one of Carnegie Mellon University's most-confusing labyrinths: the halls of the Human Computer Interaction Institute.
"Once I locate myself with this, it tells me immediately to take the first intersection on the left," said Wassermann, 72, of Oakland. "If I hadn't had that clue, I might have turned right, and it would have taken me a while to get back on track. This starts me off in the right way."
BlindAid, a personal digital assistant developed by Carnegie Mellon students as part of a project to bring technological solutions to underserved communities, guided Wassermann from rooms 3527 to 3602 with calmly spoken directions. He found the room as fast as any professor could.
TechBridgeWorld gives students an opportunity to earn class credit by using what they've learned about robotics and computer science to help others. Past projects have taken students as far as West Africa, where they tested a computerized reading tutor to improve literacy rates. This year's two projects kept students closer to home, helping the blind and deaf.
"It's been a really great experience," said Ling Xu, a doctoral student in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. She and Vinithra Varadharajan, a master's student at the Robotics Institute, created DeSIGN, a computer game to improve the literacy skills of deaf children.
"Because students have to be fluent in two different languages -- English and American Sign Language -- they really need a lot of practice," Xu said.
Most deaf students graduate with a fourth-grade reading level. At the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Edgewood -- where Xu and Varadharajan tested their program -- the students do better, but their literacy skills still lag hearing students' by two or three grade levels.
"It's fun, it's cool -- it's a cool game," Destiny Quarles, 11, of Coraopolis, signed after she used the program to create a jungle scene full of butterflies -- her favorite.
The game introduces students to vocabulary words by using them in sentences and playing a videos of their teacher signing them. When the students correctly identify a word, they are rewarded by being able to add an object to a jungle, baseball or outer-space scene.
Joyce Maravich, a computer science teacher at the school, said computers are a good way to teach deaf children because they are a visual learning tool. The school plans to put DeSIGN on its server, so it is accessible through all of its computers, and incorporate it into lesson plans.
A test run of the game on eight children showed that it improved their vocabulary retention by 17.8 percent.
BlindAid, created by Robotics Institute doctoral students Maxim Makatchev, Sandra Mau and Nik Melchior, proved successful in trial runs. By using the device to scan tags -- similar to those used on items in a grocery store -- that were placed on corners and near room numbers, participants found their way to different rooms 25 percent faster than if they relied on the Braille room labels on the plaques outside the doors.
BlindAid isn't yet marketable. The scanner is bulky, and if someone gets off course, the directions become confusing. But Sarah Belousov, a project assistant at Carnegie Mellon who coordinates TechBridgeWorld, said future students are welcome to pick up where Makatchev, Mau and Melchior leave off.
"It's always good to know that on the horizon there will be technology to help you navigate in totally strange places," Wassermann said. "It'd be nice if they could get this on street signs as well as buildings."
Running his hand along the wall, Joe Wassermann quickly found the smooth, white tag.
After scanning it with a handheld computer, the blind man instantly had the layout of one of Carnegie Mellon University's most-confusing labyrinths: the halls of the Human Computer Interaction Institute.
"Once I locate myself with this, it tells me immediately to take the first intersection on the left," said Wassermann, 72, of Oakland. "If I hadn't had that clue, I might have turned right, and it would have taken me a while to get back on track. This starts me off in the right way."
BlindAid, a personal digital assistant developed by Carnegie Mellon students as part of a project to bring technological solutions to underserved communities, guided Wassermann from rooms 3527 to 3602 with calmly spoken directions. He found the room as fast as any professor could.
TechBridgeWorld gives students an opportunity to earn class credit by using what they've learned about robotics and computer science to help others. Past projects have taken students as far as West Africa, where they tested a computerized reading tutor to improve literacy rates. This year's two projects kept students closer to home, helping the blind and deaf.
"It's been a really great experience," said Ling Xu, a doctoral student in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. She and Vinithra Varadharajan, a master's student at the Robotics Institute, created DeSIGN, a computer game to improve the literacy skills of deaf children.
"Because students have to be fluent in two different languages -- English and American Sign Language -- they really need a lot of practice," Xu said.
Most deaf students graduate with a fourth-grade reading level. At the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Edgewood -- where Xu and Varadharajan tested their program -- the students do better, but their literacy skills still lag hearing students' by two or three grade levels.
"It's fun, it's cool -- it's a cool game," Destiny Quarles, 11, of Coraopolis, signed after she used the program to create a jungle scene full of butterflies -- her favorite.
The game introduces students to vocabulary words by using them in sentences and playing a videos of their teacher signing them. When the students correctly identify a word, they are rewarded by being able to add an object to a jungle, baseball or outer-space scene.
Joyce Maravich, a computer science teacher at the school, said computers are a good way to teach deaf children because they are a visual learning tool. The school plans to put DeSIGN on its server, so it is accessible through all of its computers, and incorporate it into lesson plans.
A test run of the game on eight children showed that it improved their vocabulary retention by 17.8 percent.
BlindAid, created by Robotics Institute doctoral students Maxim Makatchev, Sandra Mau and Nik Melchior, proved successful in trial runs. By using the device to scan tags -- similar to those used on items in a grocery store -- that were placed on corners and near room numbers, participants found their way to different rooms 25 percent faster than if they relied on the Braille room labels on the plaques outside the doors.
BlindAid isn't yet marketable. The scanner is bulky, and if someone gets off course, the directions become confusing. But Sarah Belousov, a project assistant at Carnegie Mellon who coordinates TechBridgeWorld, said future students are welcome to pick up where Makatchev, Mau and Melchior leave off.
"It's always good to know that on the horizon there will be technology to help you navigate in totally strange places," Wassermann said. "It'd be nice if they could get this on street signs as well as buildings."