| Work at NSF’s Quality of
Life Technology (QoLT) Engineering Research Center, based at Carnegie Mellon
University, has focused on intelligent systems that augment body and mind
for self-determination for older adults and people with disabilities.
The work has led to a number of potential products that could appeal to
wider consumer markets, including the Lean & Zoom system from startup
invynt LLC.
Pittsburgh-based invynt was
launched in June 2009, a product of the QoLT Center’s Foundry, which creates
companies that commercialize ERC-associated research.
Lean & Zoom leverages
the rising use of cameras at computer workstations to measure an operator's
natural tendency to lean to see content on the PC's screen. The user
is usually leaning to magnify otherwise hard-to-see details. As the
software measures a change in the user's profile when the user leans toward
the screen (and camera), the Lean & Zoom system eases the need to lean
further by automatically magnifying the content on the screen.
The system was created and
developed by Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. candidate at CMU in the Human-Computer
Interaction Institute (HCII), with the assistance of Anind Dey, a member
of the QoLT faculty and assistant professor in the HCII.
The system relieves the cumulative
effects of repeated leaning that can be detrimental to users’ posture.
Over time, such leaning can also contribute to eyestrain, double vision,
headaches, and other vision-related problems. The magnitude of this
problem is growing as people spend an ever-increasing amount of time in
front of computers, mobile devices, and even automotive display systems.
The non-traditional method of input used with Lean & Zoom creates an
intuitive human-computer experience that improves quality of life without
forcing users to change their habits and without requiring a modification
to the user interface. It also reflects a goal for QoLT products
to be not just an artificial system, but a person-system symbiosis in which
the person and the system components work together.
The technology will be very
useful for partially sighted users, who will be able to automatically increase
the magnification of text, and will provide flexibility to families that
have differently sighted users.
In early 2010, the Lean &
Zoom software is nearly ready for deployment through means that could be
as simple as downloads from a website or purchase from a store. With
the assistance of the QoLT Foundry, invynt LLC is in discussion with a
number of companies and investors about future steps.
While initially focused on
computers, the system also has potential application to mobile handsets,
where cameras soon will appear on both sides of cell phones as carriers
deploy on-the-go videoconferencing systems. |
