30-01-2013, 02:49 PM
Project Oxygen
1Project Oxygen.docx (Size: 313.75 KB / Downloads: 27)
WHAT IS PROJECT OXYGEN?
Michael Dertouzos, late director of MIT’s famed Laboratory for Computer Science, had a vision: pervasive, human-centered computing. “We find ourselves in the junction of two interrelated challenges: Going after the best, most exciting forefront technology; and ensuring that it truly serves human needs,” he wrote in the lab’s mission statement. Last year, the LCS-together with MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory-launched an ambitious effort to build that vision, called Project Oxygen.
HISTORY:
For over forty years, computation has centered about machine no people. We have catered to expensive computers, pampering them in air-conditioned rooms or carrying them around with us. Purporting to serve us, they have actually forced us to serve them. They have been difficult to use. They have required us to interact with them on their terms, speaking their languages and manipulating their keyboards or mice. They have not been aware of our needs or even of whether we were in the room with them. Virtual reality only makes matters worse: with it, we do not simply serve computers, but also live in a reality they create.
Approach:
Oxygen enables pervasive, human-centered computing through a combination of specific user and system technologies. Oxygen's user technologies directly address human needs. Speech and vision technologies enable us to communicate with Oxygen as if we're interacting with another person, saving much time and effort. Automation, individualized knowledge access, and collaboration technologies help us perform a wide variety of tasks that we want to do in the ways we like to do them.
Oxygen's device, network, and software technologies dramatically extend our range by delivering user technologies to us at home, at work or on the go. Computational devices, called Enviro21s (E21s), embedded in our homes, offices, and cars sense and affect our immediate environment. Handheld devices, called Handy21s (H21s), empower us to communicate and compute no matter where we are. Dynamic, self-configuring networks (N21s) help our machines locate each other as well as the people, services, and resources we want to reach. Software that adapts to changes in the environment or in user requirements (O2S) help us do what we want when we want to do it.
Oxygen Device Technologies:
Devices in Oxygen supply power for computation, communication, and perception in much the same way that batteries and wall outlets supply power for electrical appliances. Both mobile and stationary devices are universal communication and computation appliances. They are also anonymous: they do not store configurations that are customized to any particular user. As for batteries and power outlets, the primary dif ference between them lies in the amount of energy they supply.
Oxygen Network Technologies:
Networks, called N21s, connect dynamically changing configurations of self-identifying mobile and stationary devices to form collaborative regions. N21s support multiple communication protocols for low-power point-to-point, building-wide, and campus-wide communication. N21s also provide completely decentralized mechanisms for naming, location and resource discovery, and secure information access.
Oxygen Software Technologies:
The Oxygen software environment is built to support change, which is inevitable if Oxygen is to provide a system that is adaptable, let alone eternal. Change is occasioned by anonymous devices customizing to users, by explicit user requests, by the needs of applications and their components, by current operating conditions, by the availability of new software and upgrades, by failures, or by any number of other causes. Oxygen's so ftware architecture relies on control and planning abstractions that provide mechanisms for change, on specifications that support putting these mechanisms to use, and on persistent object stores with transactional semantics to provide operational support for change.
Oxygen perceptual Technologies:
Speech and vision, rather than keyboards and mice, provide the main modes of interaction in Oxygen. Multimodal integration increases the effectiveness of these perceptual technologies, for example, by using vision to augment speech understanding by recognizing facial expressions, lip movement, and gaze. Perceptual technologies are part of the core of Oxygen, not just afterthoughts or interfaces to separate applications. Oxygen applications can tailor "lite" versions of these technologies quickly to make human-machine interaction easy and natural. Graceful interdomain context switching supports seamless integration of applications.
1Project Oxygen.docx (Size: 313.75 KB / Downloads: 27)
WHAT IS PROJECT OXYGEN?
Michael Dertouzos, late director of MIT’s famed Laboratory for Computer Science, had a vision: pervasive, human-centered computing. “We find ourselves in the junction of two interrelated challenges: Going after the best, most exciting forefront technology; and ensuring that it truly serves human needs,” he wrote in the lab’s mission statement. Last year, the LCS-together with MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory-launched an ambitious effort to build that vision, called Project Oxygen.
HISTORY:
For over forty years, computation has centered about machine no people. We have catered to expensive computers, pampering them in air-conditioned rooms or carrying them around with us. Purporting to serve us, they have actually forced us to serve them. They have been difficult to use. They have required us to interact with them on their terms, speaking their languages and manipulating their keyboards or mice. They have not been aware of our needs or even of whether we were in the room with them. Virtual reality only makes matters worse: with it, we do not simply serve computers, but also live in a reality they create.
Approach:
Oxygen enables pervasive, human-centered computing through a combination of specific user and system technologies. Oxygen's user technologies directly address human needs. Speech and vision technologies enable us to communicate with Oxygen as if we're interacting with another person, saving much time and effort. Automation, individualized knowledge access, and collaboration technologies help us perform a wide variety of tasks that we want to do in the ways we like to do them.
Oxygen's device, network, and software technologies dramatically extend our range by delivering user technologies to us at home, at work or on the go. Computational devices, called Enviro21s (E21s), embedded in our homes, offices, and cars sense and affect our immediate environment. Handheld devices, called Handy21s (H21s), empower us to communicate and compute no matter where we are. Dynamic, self-configuring networks (N21s) help our machines locate each other as well as the people, services, and resources we want to reach. Software that adapts to changes in the environment or in user requirements (O2S) help us do what we want when we want to do it.
Oxygen Device Technologies:
Devices in Oxygen supply power for computation, communication, and perception in much the same way that batteries and wall outlets supply power for electrical appliances. Both mobile and stationary devices are universal communication and computation appliances. They are also anonymous: they do not store configurations that are customized to any particular user. As for batteries and power outlets, the primary dif ference between them lies in the amount of energy they supply.
Oxygen Network Technologies:
Networks, called N21s, connect dynamically changing configurations of self-identifying mobile and stationary devices to form collaborative regions. N21s support multiple communication protocols for low-power point-to-point, building-wide, and campus-wide communication. N21s also provide completely decentralized mechanisms for naming, location and resource discovery, and secure information access.
Oxygen Software Technologies:
The Oxygen software environment is built to support change, which is inevitable if Oxygen is to provide a system that is adaptable, let alone eternal. Change is occasioned by anonymous devices customizing to users, by explicit user requests, by the needs of applications and their components, by current operating conditions, by the availability of new software and upgrades, by failures, or by any number of other causes. Oxygen's so ftware architecture relies on control and planning abstractions that provide mechanisms for change, on specifications that support putting these mechanisms to use, and on persistent object stores with transactional semantics to provide operational support for change.
Oxygen perceptual Technologies:
Speech and vision, rather than keyboards and mice, provide the main modes of interaction in Oxygen. Multimodal integration increases the effectiveness of these perceptual technologies, for example, by using vision to augment speech understanding by recognizing facial expressions, lip movement, and gaze. Perceptual technologies are part of the core of Oxygen, not just afterthoughts or interfaces to separate applications. Oxygen applications can tailor "lite" versions of these technologies quickly to make human-machine interaction easy and natural. Graceful interdomain context switching supports seamless integration of applications.