Post on 29-Sep-2020
transcript
Remember the Name
EDesign 100 Section 14
Engineering Corps
5 May 2014
Astin Toms (aat5192@psu.edu), Harrison Chen
(hhc5033@psu.edu), Olivia Caldwell (ovc5041@psu.edu)
Executive summary or Abstract:
Engineering Corps proposed project is an
aid to help remember names. The
targeted customers are business people who
need to know so many names on a daily
basis. The product is not only confined to business people, because every day there are
people forgetting names. This product is for those people who want to be able to
properly address individuals in their world. To be able to achieve success with names,
Engineering Corps is using different wavelengths for different people so specific
wavelengths can be recognized as a name.
Introduction:
Being in the business world people are always expected to remember names,
but remembering names can be challenging at times. People can forget names under
stress, when too much is going on, or just in general. This poses a problem because
people are more likely to be viewed as professional if they can remember names. Some
people wish that there was a way to help you remember names without anyone else
knowing. Engineering Corps has come up with a proposed product that will be able to
aid people with names. The proposed product is a small ear piece, about the size of a
hearing aid, that when someone talks to you the ear piece picks up the persons
personal wavelengths and saves them to an app through the server. Once the
wavelength is saved to the app, the owner can go through the app and add more
information. The information can be anything from what company the person works for
to what college they attended. Then the next time the customer encounters a person
whose wavelength and data is stored the device, “Remember the Name” will discretely
tell the name.
Use Case:
Our vision is to make a product that can aid people with names so they can
properly address others.
Currently, to remember names a person has to meet and hear the name a few
times until it goes to memory, and even sometimes after that a person will forget names
for all different reasons.
Engineering Corps are designing a device that when someone is wearing it in
their ear it will pick up a person’s voice wavelength and send the wave length to an app
that they can edit later and add the name/company/whatever they desire. Then the next
time you encounter that person the device will pick up the wavelength and discretely
whisper in the user’s ear anything pre-programmed about that specific wavelength in
the app.
Research:
AT&T: As a company American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (AT&T)
has been around since Alexander Graham Bell created the telephone in 1876. Since
the beginning AT&T has been setting milestones in the technology world. For example
in 1947 AT&T developed the idea of cellular telephony, even though the technology did
not exists yet (http://www.corp.att.com/history/milestones.html). More recently AT&T
has become one of the largest networks available. AT&T serves 110 million customers
in more than 225 countries around the world (http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?
pid=5711).
Cellular Technology: It is the technology used in a wireless phone. It enables
mobile communication because of a two-way radio system between the wireless phone
and the wireless network.(https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/Cellular%20Technology.pdf)
1G, 2G, 3G and 4G were designed and used and developed by the carriers to meet
their customer needs. For 1G, it can only use in basic voice calls, but 3G makes the
phone always connect with an internet.
(
http://www.moxa.com/newsletter/connection/2007/08/Beginner's_Guide_to_Cellular_Te
chnology.htm)
The Cloud: More and more today the cloud is being talked about and used, but
what is the cloud? The cloud is a way of networking tons of computers together by using
the internet. It is more simply put that the cloud is really the internet. The cloud gives the
ability to run programs or applications over a network with many connected computers
at the same time. The advantage to the cloud is that shared resources are at a
maximum effectiveness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing).
Rationale for Use Case: A use case is used to help see the vision, how to get
there, and the current state. It is meant as a guide to help clearly define the problem
that is trying to be solved and ways to try and achieve that. We followed a model to
design our use case, and catered it toward our idea.
Rationale for Survey: Engineering Corps created a survey to help get an idea of
what type of product normal customers would be willing to buy to help them remember
names. Some of the ideas of questions that were asked were if individuals forgot
names, if they would like a device to help remember names, if they felt more
professional if they remembered names, and a price range for how much they would be
willing to spend if a product like this existed.
Concept Generation:
From research there common methods used to identify a person.
Holistic Face Method:
A method where a machine uses the whole face as an input, the machine then
compares the details of a person’s face. This method may be affected if a person
makes facial expression. This machine has an average of 71% recognition success.
This method was used in some government and office buildings to authorize a person
for access into the building.
Feature-based face Method:
Feature-based Method is a more advanced way than the Holistic face method.
The method uses only part of the human’s face (examples are eye, nose or mouth
region) as an input. It needs much less information to process than the holistic method
to identify the person. Disadvantages are the characteristics of a person are not stable
because over a long period of time features change.
Voice:
Voice recognition is used on a daily basis by many people since everyone has a
distinct voice. The most common way to recognize a person’s sound wave is by a
Hidden Markov model, and for security, the Hidden Markov model can’t do it inversely to
get the original speech. The disadvantage of voice is as a person get older, his/her
vocal system can be change, and it could cause a significant change in their frequency
and wavelength of their voice.
Gait:
This is a new way develop by the psychologist to identify a person. It uses how
the people walk as its input to figure out who the person is.
Body Characteristic:
This type of method uses the characteristic of a person such as body weight, this
method is not accurate in long period of time due to change of the person.
As seen in the chart above the voice is the best way to identify a person.
Concept selection.
Engineering Corps had a few ideas to help aid people with remembering names.
The ideas ranged from wearing a necklace or brooch to use face recognition for names
to what we ended up deciding to go with, which was a small ear piece that uses voice
wavelengths. We decided to go with that idea since the product needed to be something
that was discreet but also something that was effective, and that many people would
use. To get a better idea a survey was drawn up to get some feedback from possible
consumers to see what kind of device would be the most productive, and at how much
they were willing to spend to remember names.
Systems Diagram.
This systems diagram shows the connection between the device, an app, and the cloud.
It shows that each one is connected to the other, and that you need all three for the
device to operate properly and efficiently.
Design Analysis:
Remember the Name will use Bluetooth for the bandwidth, this is because the
device will need constant connection to the internet. The range of ten meters would be
acceptable because for the most part the device and the app will not be far from each
other since most people do not leave their phones. IEEE 802.15.1 will be the
wavelength the device is using. The cost of Remember the Name will be $99.99. This
includes the price of the device along with the free app.
Our target audience will be for people in the workforce or people who have
trouble remembering names. There will be marketing to get the device’s name and
function out to the public. Marketing will help to get the word out, so more people will
know about the product and be able to go and buy it. Marketing will be achieved by ads,
word of mouth, and social media.
Some data management related issues that could occur is if the device is picking
up more than one wavelength at a time, it will be able to record all of the wavelengths,
and also record how long the wavelength was being used, (how long the person was
talking for.) Then the owner of the device would be able to go into the app later and edit
the information. The person who talked the most would be the person who had the
wavelength recorded the most. This would allow for the owner to be talking with multiple
new people at the same time and still be able to use the device properly. The device
records and remembers people’s wavelength. This could interfere with people that are
under government protection, because if their voice wavelengths are being recorded
they may no longer be safe from what they are being protected from. People are very
particular as to what is recorded of them or what kind of pictures are taken of them. The
only privacy issue that could be a concern is that not everyone would want to have their
voice wavelengths recorded and remembered.
3D Model:
This is our design for Remember the Name as designed on SolidWorks. Several
pictures were included to allow different views of the product. A CAD drawing was also
included to show the dimensions of the product could be given.
This is how the app would be designed. You would be able to turn the device on
and off with the app, in addition to being able to control the volume. Data that you could
include in the contact information about the person are what company they work for,
what their position they hold, last time you spoke, and any other information that you
feel is necessary.
Prototype:
Remember the Name prototype is shown in pictures below. It has two main parts,
one that sits inside of the ear and the other part that is located outside of the ear. The
part inside of the ear has a speaker that will tell the owner the name of the wavelength
that it is picking up. The part on the outside of the ear will be able to pick up the
wavelength and transport that data directly to the app.
This is a picture of the wavelength receiver of the device.
This is the picture of the speaker part of the device
Overall view of the prototype
Concept of Operations:
Scenario 1: If someone is working in a factory (or another loud environment) while using
the product there can be many outside noises that could potentially confuse the device.
However, Remember the Name has a circuit that contains both low frequency and high
frequency signal filter that only 300 to 1000 Hz signal can pass through, so the saved
data will not include noise from the surroundings. Helping keep the app just for voices
and names.
Scenario 2: In a group setting, if someone is talking to more than one new person the
device will be picking up more than one wavelength. The device will send all the new
wavelengths to the app where the time and duration spent talking to each person will be
recorded and then when the owner is going back in to enter names it will be easier to
remember who is who since they will know roughly how much each person talked.
Scenario 3: If in ten years the owner comes across someone who is saved into the
device, due to the aging of that person, the soft tissues of his/her larynx will also change
over time, and it will cause the change in frequency and wavelength of the voice.
Unfortunately at this time Engineering Corps has no other solution for this issue besides
re-entering the person’s data because they are essentially a “new person” with the
changed voice. Although using the app to organize the characteristic of the people’s
speech is a possible way to solve it. (How people organize their language, how many
times do they use a specific word in the speech, etc.) But it will increase the privacy
issue of the Remember the name.
Conclusions:
Remember the Name is a device designed to help individuals remember names.
It is meant to be an aid to remembering names and should not be fully depended upon.
The main purpose is to help those who have difficulty remembering names, and to
provide some reassurance in a group setting that the owner is properly addressing an
individual with the correct name. The device will be reasonably priced for what the
device can accomplish. While the main audience is people in the work force many
others can use the device, like the older generations who have trouble remembering.
Remember the Name is the first device of its kind on the market and will be easily
available to customers.
References:
http://www.corp.att.com/history/milestones.html
http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?pid=5711
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
http://www.ncvs.org/ncvs/tutorials/voiceprod/tutorial/changes.html
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=628714
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/2924763_People_Recognition_by_Mobile_Robots/file/9c960517001c439084.pdf