Increase Apparent Public Speaking Fluency By Speech Augmentation

Fluent and confident speech is desirable to every speaker. But professional speech delivering requires a great deal of experience and practice. In this paper, we propose a speech stream manipulation system which can help non-professional speakers to produce fluent, professional-like speech content, in turn contributing towards better listener engagement and comprehension. We propose to achieve this task by manipulating the disfluencies in human speech, like the sounds 'uh' and 'um', the filler words and awkward long silences. Given any unrehearsed speech we segment and silence the filled pauses and doctor the duration of imposed silence as well as other long pauses ('disfluent') by a predictive model learned using professional speech dataset. Finally, we output a audio stream in which speaker sounds more fluent, confident and practiced compared to the original speech he/she recorded. According to our quantitative evaluation, we significantly increase the fluency of speech by reducing rate of pauses and fillers

EyeRing: an eye on a finger

Finger-worn devices are a greatly underutilized form of interaction with the surrounding world. By putting a camera on a finger we show that many visual analysis applications, for visually impaired people as well as the sighted, prove seamless and easy. We present EyeRing, a ring mounted camera, to enable applications such as identifying currency and navigating, as well as helping sighted people to tour an unknown city or intuitively translate signage. The ring apparatus is autonomous, however our system also includes a mobile phone or computation device to which it connects wirelessly, and an earpiece for information retrieval. Finally, we will discuss how different finger worn sensors may be extended and applied to other domains

nARratives of augmented worlds

This paper presents an examination of augmented reality (AR) as a rising form of interactive narrative that combines computer-generated elements with reality, fictional with non-fictional objects, in the same immersive experience. Based on contemporary theory in narratology, we propose to view this blending of reality worlds as a metalepsis, a transgression of reality and fiction boundaries, and argue that authors could benefit from using existing conventions of narration to emphasize the transgressed boundaries, as is done in other media. Our contribution is three-fold, first we analyze the inherent connection between narrative, immersion, interactivity, fictionality and AR using narrative theory, and second we comparatively survey actual works in AR narratives from the past 15 years based on these elements from the theory. Lastly, we postulate a future for AR narratives through the perspective of the advancing technologies of both interactive narratives and AR

PoCoMo: Projected Collaboration using Mobile Devices

As personal projection devices become more common they will be able to support a range of exciting and unexplored social applications. We present a novel system and method that enables playful social interactions between multiple projected characters. The prototype consists of two mobile projector-camera systems, with lightly modified existing hardware, and computer vision algorithms to support a selection of applications and example scenarios. Our system allows participants to discover the characteristics and behaviors of other characters projected in the environment. The characters are guided by hand movements, and can respond to objects and other characters, to simulate a mixed reality of life-like entities

Physical rendering with a digital airbrush

Airbrush painting is an expressive art form that allows for unrepeatable spray patterns and unique ink staining. Artists utilize these properties while painting, expressing subjective style and artistic intentions. We present an augmented airbrush device that acts both as a physical spraying device and an intelligent digital guiding tool, that maintains both manual and computerized control. We demonstrate our custom designed hardware and numerous algorithms that control it through hands-on usage examples of a human-computer collaborative of a physical painting effort

EyeRing: A Finger-Worn Input Device for Seamless Interactions with Our Surroundings

Finger-worn interfaces remain a vastly unexplored space for user interfaces, despite the fact that our fingers and hands are naturally used for referencing and interacting with the environment. In this paper we present design guidelines and implementation of a finger-worn I/O device, the EyeRing, which leverages the universal and natural gesture of pointing. We present use cases of EyeRing for both visually impaired and sighted people. We discuss initial reactions from visually impaired users which suggest that EyeRing may indeed offer a more seamless solution for dealing with their immediate surroundings than the solutions they currently use. We also report on a user study that demonstrates how EyeRing reduces effort and disruption to a sighted user. We conclude that this highly promising form factor offers both audiences enhanced, seamless interaction with information related to objects in the environment.Singapore University of Technology and Design. International Design Center (IDC grant IDG31100104A)Singapore University of Technology and Design. International Design Center (IDC grant IDD41100102A

FingerReader: A Wearable Device to Explore Printed Text on the Go

Accessing printed text in a mobile context is a major challenge for the blind. A preliminary study with blind people reveals numerous difficulties with existing state-of-the-art technologies including problems with alignment, focus, accuracy, mobility and efficiency. In this paper, we present a finger-worn device, FingerReader, that assists blind users with reading printed text on the go. We introduce a novel computer vision algorithm for local-sequential text scanning that enables reading single lines, blocks of text or skimming the text with complementary, multimodal feedback. This system is implemented in a small finger-worn form factor, that enables a more manageable eyes-free operation with trivial setup. We offer findings from three studies performed to determine the usability of the FingerReader.SUTD-MIT International Design Centr

FingerDraw: More than a Digital Paintbrush

Research in cognitive science shows that engaging in visual arts has great benefits for children particularly when it allows them to bond with nature [7]. In this paper, we introduce FingerDraw, a novel drawing interface that aims to keep children connected to the physical environment by letting them use their surroundings as templates and color palette. The FingerDraw system consists of (1) a finger-worn input device [13] which allows children to upload visual contents such as shapes, colors and textures that exist in the real world; (2) a tablet with touch interface that serves as a digital canvas for drawing. In addition to real-time drawing activities, children can also collect a palette of colors and textures in the input device and later feed them into the drawing interface. Initial reactions from a case study indicated that the system could keep a child engaged with their surroundings for hours to draw using the wide range of shapes, colors and patterns found in the natural environment