The Premise
In normal social interaction, people use gestures, facial expressions, and other visual cues to help convey their ideas. But what if you were blind? You wouldn't know if someone was smiling, surprised, or if they were even talking to you at all. Can technology help to provide information that is not otherwise available to people with visual impairments? Humans recognize emotions by analyzing the state of various facial features, such as the mouth and eyes. We're trained to know that raised eyebrows indicate surprise, and that slanted eyebrows and furrowed brows indicate anger and frustration. Is it possible, through the use of various computer vision techniques, to program computers to perform a similar logical process?
History
Initially, this project was started by another high school student, Shantanu Bala, who was working with a PhD student - Sreekar Krishna - at the CUbiC lab at ASU. I came to the lab looking for research opportunities, and was tasked on helping with the Interaction Assistant. After a few months, we submitted a paper to an international conference (HAVE 2010) and got feedback from experts and proffesionals in the field of haptics. From there we improved the project and submitted to the Google Science Fair. You can view our submission here.
Afterwards, we refined our project and submitted to HiSEF, where we got 1st place in the category of Computer Science. Advancing to the state level, we won multiple awards at AzSEF and even helped Hamilton High School win the best school award. As one of the grand award winners, we were selected as a finalist for ISEF. At ISEF, we won 3nd palce IEEE Society Group Award, as well as 4th place in the category of Computer Science.
Links
IEEE Database Link for HAVE 2010 Paper
Awards
AzSEF Report Version
-2nd PlaceIEEE Society Group Award ($400)
-4th Place in Computer Science ($500)
AzSEF 2011 (State Fair)
-AzSEF Grand Award ($100)
(Selected as a Finalist to Represent Arizona at ISEF)
-Intel Excellence in Computer Science ($200)
-United States Army Award ($50 Bond)
-United States Air Force Award
-1st Place in Computer Science
HISEF 2011 (School Fair)
-1st Place in Computer Science
Press Links
5 Ariz. students earn high honors at science fair