Emerging Information Technologies Dr Charles C Tappert Department

Emerging Information Technologies Dr. Charles C. Tappert Department of CSIS Pace University

Emerging Information Technologies w. What are Emerging Info Technologies? w. Moore’s Law and what might follow w. Wearable/Handheld Computers w. Virtual Reality w. Artificial Intelligence we-Commerce w. Speech and Handwriting Interfaces

Technology Life Cycle w w w Precursor - dream or contemplation Invention Emergence (development) Acceptance (established) Surplus or Obsolescence

Moore’s Law w Every 18 months we put twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit doubling computing power w Been in effect about 40 years w Projected to continue another 20 years w This will end when the size of a transistor approaches the size of a few atoms and conventional shrinking methods won’t work w What will happen then?

After Moore’s Law New Technologies Will Emerge w Nanotechnology w Quantum Computing w Chaos Computing w Optical Computing

Wearable/Handheld Computers Enabling Technologies w Smaller & Faster Processors w Interfaces in Human Modalities n n Speech recognition (input) and synthesis (output) Pen Computing (input/output) w Head Mounted Displays (output) w Wireless communication

Photos of Wearable Computers

Virtual Reality w Head Mounted Displays n n Block view of outside world Completely immerse user in virtual world w Applications n n n Flight simulators Equipment operators Game playing

Photos of VR HMDs

Artificial Intelligence w Pattern recognition n Speech & handwriting recognition Face recognition Military target recognition w Search solution spaces n n Business optimization problems Chess and other game playing w Expert Systems n n n Medical diagnosis Decision Support Systems E-commerce agents

e-Commerce Web Metamorphosis w from digital library n n static web pages focus on retrieval w to an electronic marketplace n n dynamic web pages focus on transactions w requires new perspective & control mechanisms

e-Commerce Web Pull/Push Technologies w Web pull technologies n n Surfing the Net Using a search engine Personal search engines Using an evolutionary agent w Web push technologies n n Broadcasting/Webcasting Selective channeling & filtering Push what the user wants (cookies) Evolutionary push provides exact user needs

e-Commerce Agents w w w w Web Representation - marketplace goods & services Promotion - interactive ads Payment & settlement - secure funds transfer Valuation - online auctions and bargaining Customer info - track customer preferences and habits Quality - ratings, reviews, recommendations Risk Management - product guarantees, loss insurance Negotiation - automated systems for negotiation

Speech Recognition w Isolated words n Navigation and control systems w Continuous speech recognition n Dictation w Speech understanding systems n General speech input

Speech Recognition Problems w Dialects w Telephone/cell phone limitations w Noisy environments w Similar sounding words

Speech Recognition Problems w Similar sounding words n n Recognize speech Wreck a nice beach w Identically sounding words - homophones n n The sun’s rays meet The sons raise meat

Speech Understanding Problems Natural Language Understanding w The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak

Speech Understanding Problems Natural Language Understanding w The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak w The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten

Handwriting Recognition w Offline n n Scanned Images Static Information w Online n n Electronic Tablet or Digitizer Real-Time, Dynamic Information

Online Handwriting Recognition w Invention of electronic tablets -- late 1950 s n Tablet and display were separate w Pen Computing -- 1980 s n n Combined tablets and dislpay Brought input and output into the same surface Immediate feedback via electronic ink Created the paper-like interface

Dynamic Handwriting Information w Number of strokes a stroke is the ink trace from pen down to pen up w Order of strokes w Stroke direction w Stroke velocity, acceleration

Written Language and Handwriting Properties w Alphabet n Letters, digits, punctuation, special symbols w Writing is a time sequence of strokes n Complete one character before beginning next except for delayed strokes n Spatial order -- for example, left to right

Written English Writing Styles w Handprint n n Uppercase -- about 2 strokes per letter Lowercase -- about 1 stroke per letter w Cursive Script n n Less than a stroke per letter Delayed crossing and dotting strokes

Computer Problems in English w Constrained Handprint n n Printing on lines -- symbols can touch or overlap Printing one symbol per box -- form filling w Unconstrained Handprint n No lines and symbols can touch or overlap w Cursive Script w Mixed Printing and Cursive

Handprint Recognition Difficulties w Digitizer problems w Writing variation not handled by system w Uppercase versus lowercase versus digits w Segmentation -- character within character problem

Design of Graffiti for Palm Pilot w Small Alphabet n uppercase, digits, special symbols w One stroke per symbol to avoid segmentation difficulty w Separate writing areas to avoid letter and digit confusion

Graffiti Alphabet

Early Shorthand Alphabets w Ancient Greeks -- 400 BC w Tironian -- 63 BC w Stenographie -- 1602 w Gabelsberger -- 1834 w Moon -- 1894 w Goldberg’s Unistrokes (Xerox) -- 1993

Stenographie Alphabet 1602

Moon Alphabet 1894

Pen Computing Future Work w Graffiti recognizer greatly simplified the recognition problem w Handprint problem not completely solved n Even with IBM’s Think. Write, CIC’s Jot, and Microsoft products w Cursive script not solved

Example of the Difficulty of Recognizing Cursive Script

Summary w. What are Emerging Info Technologies? w. Moore’s Law and what might follow w. Wearable/Handheld Computers w. Virtual Reality w. Artificial Intelligence we-Commerce w. Speech and Handwriting Interfaces