Emerging Information Technologies

Dr. Charles C. Tappert

Department of CSIS

Pace University

Emerging Information Technologies

What are Emerging Info Technologies?Moore’s Law and what might followWearable/Handheld ComputersVirtual RealityArtificial Intelligencee-CommerceSpeech and Handwriting Interfaces

Technology Life Cycle

Precursor - dream or contemplation Invention Emergence (development) Acceptance (established) Surplus or Obsolescence

Moore’s Law

Every 18 months we put twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit doubling computing power

Been in effect about 40 years Projected to continue another 20 years This will end when the size of a transistor

approaches the size of a few atoms and conventional shrinking methods won’t work

What will happen then?

After Moore’s Law New Technologies Will Emerge

Nanotechnology Quantum Computing Chaos Computing Optical Computing

Wearable/Handheld Computers Enabling Technologies

Smaller & Faster Processors Interfaces in Human Modalities

Speech recognition (input) and synthesis (output) Pen Computing (input/output)

Head Mounted Displays (output) Wireless communication

Photos of Wearable Computers

Virtual Reality

Head Mounted Displays Block view of outside world Completely immerse user in virtual world

Applications Flight simulators Equipment operators Game playing

Photos of VR HMDs

Artificial Intelligence Pattern recognition

Speech & handwriting recognition Face recognition Military target recognition

Search solution spaces Business optimization problems Chess and other game playing

Expert Systems Medical diagnosis Decision Support Systems E-commerce agents

e-Commerce Web Metamorphosis

from digital library static web pages focus on retrieval

to an electronic marketplace dynamic web pages focus on transactions

requires new perspective & control mechanisms

e-Commerce Web Pull/Push Technologies

Web pull technologies Surfing the Net Using a search engine Personal search engines Using an evolutionary agent

Web push technologies Broadcasting/Webcasting Selective channeling & filtering Push what the user wants (cookies) Evolutionary push provides exact user needs

e-Commerce Web Agents

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

Isolated words Navigation and control systems

Continuous speech recognition Dictation

Speech understanding systems General speech input

Speech Recognition Problems

Dialects Telephone/cell phone limitations Noisy environments Similar sounding words

Speech Recognition Problems

Similar sounding words Recognize speech Wreck a nice beach

Identically sounding words - homophones The sun’s rays meet The sons raise meat

Speech Understanding Problems Natural Language Understanding

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak

Speech Understanding Problems Natural Language Understanding

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten

Handwriting Recognition

Offline Scanned Images Static Information

Online Electronic Tablet or Digitizer Real-Time, Dynamic Information

Online Handwriting Recognition

Invention of electronic tablets -- late 1950s Tablet and display were separate

Pen Computing -- 1980s 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

Number of strokesa stroke is the ink trace from pen down to pen up

Order of strokes Stroke direction Stroke velocity, acceleration

Written Language and Handwriting Properties

Alphabet Letters, digits, punctuation, special symbols

Writing is a time sequence of strokes Complete one character before beginning next

except for delayed strokes Spatial order -- for example, left to right

Written English Writing Styles

Handprint Uppercase -- about 2 strokes per letter Lowercase -- about 1 stroke per letter

Cursive Script Less than a stroke per letter Delayed crossing and dotting strokes

Computer Problems in English

Constrained Handprint Printing on lines -- symbols can touch or overlap Printing one symbol per box -- form filling

Unconstrained Handprint No lines and symbols can touch or overlap

Cursive Script Mixed Printing and Cursive

Handprint Recognition Difficulties

Digitizer problems Writing variation not handled by system Uppercase versus lowercase versus digits Segmentation -- character within character

problem

Design of Graffiti for Palm Pilot

Small Alphabet uppercase, digits, special symbols

One stroke per symbol to avoid segmentation difficulty

Separate writing areas to avoid letter and digit confusion

Graffiti Alphabet

Early Shorthand Alphabets

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

Stenographie Alphabet 1602

Moon Alphabet 1894

Pen Computing Future Work

Graffiti recognizer greatly simplified the recognition problem

Handprint problem not completely solved Even with IBM’s ThinkWrite, CIC’s Jot, and

Microsoft products

Cursive script not solved

Example of the Difficulty of Recognizing Cursive Script

SummaryWhat are Emerging Info Technologies?Moore’s Law and what might followWearable/Handheld ComputersVirtual RealityArtificial Intelligencee-CommerceSpeech and Handwriting Interfaces