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BID: The Berkeley Institute of Design. BID is a new research program about design in the era of pervasive technology. The BID lab is a 4000 sq ft space in the Hearst Memorial Mining Building with researchers from CS, ME, Education, Art Practice, SIMS and architecture. The program covers activity-oriented design of workspaces, products and information systems. |
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Flexonics
is a new class of mechatronic devices that differ from their
traditional counterparts in both fabrication and design. Our goal is
to build fully functional mechatronic devices without assembly. These
devices will integrate structural, mechanical, and electronic
components during fabrication using an all inkjet printing process.
Our focus is on high-performance dielectric actuators.
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Multiview is a system for displaying multiple distinct views on a single screen. It can be used to provide spatially-faithful video-conferencing for natural eye contact and deixis. It can also be used to provide many views for walk-around inspection of architectural models or other 3D designs. Inter-image spacing ranges from many degrees to a fraction of a degree. |
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Ubicomp Privacy aims to develop new tools and techniques for privacy in a variety of situations including: collaborative work, smart spaces, and location-aware services. We are particularly interested in techniques that control how information is used, not just who has access to it. The goal is to develop provably strong (cryptographic and information-theoretic) protocols that are practically realizable. |
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Activity-Based Computing (ABC) explores the role of activities in shaping behavior. Activities are patterns of particular people, documents, tools, places, calendar times etc. Probabilistic models are used to build activity maps from low-level log data about email, document use, web browsing etc. Private computation is used so this log data is never exposed. ABC can be used for proactive document sharing, proactive retrieval, disambiguation, and other contextualization tasks. |
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Glaze is developing design methods for location-based services. The goal is to support rapid development and customization of location applications via technology probes, using a simple noun-verb interface. Our hypothesis is that LBSes should support small and large quanta of functionality, and design methods should support both. We want to support a flexible "design hierarchy" from originating designer through other "customizers" through to the end user. |
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PACT stands for Pattern-Annotated Course Tool. PACT is intended as a fast-track to next-generation learner-centered courses. Learner-centered classrooms are radically different from traditional ones, with learning based on carefully crafted and organized activities. PACT exposes the essential knowledge instructors need to create these courses through pedagogical patterns. It supports authoring courses, customizing them while preserving their pedagogical principles, and eventually the creation and sharing of new pedagogical patterns. |
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TinyMotion is a software-only mouse pointer for cameraphones. Tinymotion uses computer vision to estimate the motion of any scene the camera is pointing at. On a fixed background, it estimates the camera's motion relative to the background. A stream of images are captured from the camera, and image displacements are computed in real-time. The pointer data can be used for games, for map browsing, or for any other mouse-like pointing function. |
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MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies, aims to improve "power language" literacy in developing regions. In most developing regions, literacy is a major key to opportunity, and the power language is often different from the learners first language. School learning is often problematic and PCs are as yet rare in these contexts, so MILLEE uses cell phones as the platform. MILLEE experiences are game-like and support anytime/anywhere learning, even for children who spend many hours a week working. |
| SIMILE is focused on natural speech interfaces for users in developing regions. In this project, we are developing a large-vocabulary, continuous speech recognizer for smart phones to enable new forms of interaction. Our first application is to speech-based language learning in the MILLEE project. Beyond that we hope to explore localized services with maximum economic impact in developing regions. | |
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SmartSpace uses audio information to localize users in the BID lab. A large array of microphones in the ceiling provides a signal that is separated into spatially distinct sources (usually people speaking in the room). Eventually the goal is to use speech input from each source to drive a recognizer which will allow voice commands to control the room. For now it provides a real-time visualization of speaker location and volume. |
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Health Monitor: A wireless sensor for chronic and general wellness monitoring. Collects traditional vital signs such as ECG, SPO2, temp, as well as stress markers: EMG, GSR and movement. Designed to track chronic conditions, support differential diagnosis, and to discover predictors for a variety of health problems. |