Innovative projects

Citation

Rudall, B.H. (2001), "Innovative projects", Kybernetes, Vol. 30 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2001.06730aaa.002

Innovative projects

Innovative projects

1. Mimicking the spider

Spider silk, we are told, is one of the toughest materials known and for several years groups across the world have been attempting to create it artificially for applications as diverse as medical suturing thread and protective clothing.

The Research File of Life Sciences No. 3.2000[1] gives details of a project that aims to produce it artificially. Two companies have used genetic engineering techniques to generate the main silk protein in the laboratory, but no-one has succeeded in spinning the protein into a fibre as tough as nature's.

A grant has recently been awarded to Professors Fritz Vollrath and Donald Edmonds of the University of Oxford (UK) to design apparatus that will imitate the spider's spinning process.

Dr David Knight, a researcher on the project, says that:

The spider has an extremely sophisticated way of spinning liquid crystals and we want to mimic that. Of the spider's many tricks, we are trying to understand the most significant ones. In our approach, to study the spinning apparatus we use advanced imaging and biophysical techniques, but there are many open questions that need to be answered. Ultimately, we aim to produce a device into which we could feed small quantities of the silk protein at one end and pull fibres from the other.

The researchers say that this is a project that will involve physics, materials science, physiology and engineering. Indeed it is a prime example of a multidisciplinary study.

2. WriteTalk project

In the UK a state-funded project is designed to help physically disabled children to communicate more easily. The collaborative project is called Write-Talk and it is being carried out by the Department of Applied Computing at Dundee University, the Tayside University Hospitals NHS (National Health Service) Trust Speech and Language Therapy Service and the Dundee City Council Education Department.

The project leaders believe that:

Communication is the essence of life. Interacting with one another is something that we take for granted, but this aspect of life is severely restricted for people who can't communicate properly because of their physical disabilities. Developments in computer-based augmentative communication have made a significant difference to the lives of non-speaking people, and individuals can now have a voice of their own. However, augmented users find it difficult to maintain control within a conversation and many are forced to communicate passively, merely responding to questions rather than initiating and taking equal responsibility for controlling a conversation.

Readers may know that conversational interaction can be divided into two main areas:

1. 1.

   Transactional interaction. This refers to conversation that is "needs" and "wants" driven and is characterised by instructions, commands, warnings and requests.

2. 2.

   Interactional conversation. This is characterised by free narrative (story telling) and phatic communication (predicable chat, e.g. "hello", "goodbye").

Obviously, it is by using interactional conversation that we go beyond casual acquaintance into firm friendship and into meaningful relationships. It is our interactional skills that allow us to develop and define who we are in relation to other people.

It is the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) aids that offer the various routes of access to transactional communication. Although it is appreciated that when introducing a communication aid the need to develop story-telling skills, which allow individuals to reflect their own personalities, must be addressed if AAC users are to have the potential to become fully rounded communicators.

The WriteTalk project, we are told, has investigated ways in which:

Talk:About, a commercial story-based communication system, could be used by young people. The project's participants suffered from a variety of disabilities, but all had severe intelligibility problems. Participants, who ranged from nine to 18 years, were taught to use three software packages: Talk:About for interactive conversation, Co:Writer (a word predictor) for text creation, and Write:OutLoud (a talking word processor) for classroom writing. The research teacher and therapist worked one-to-one with participants, both at home and in the classroom.

Project evaluation. Every well-structured project must have an evaluation stage. In this case the evaluation process analysed and compared data relating to receptive and expressive communications collected prior to the technology being used, as it was used, and afterwards. This "before" and "after" evaluation showed a significant increase in expressive and interactive skills. Particular case histories are available and the participants, we are told, have shown improvements. The project workers record that:

The WriteTalk study has shown that a narrative-based AAC system allows users to expand their communication by relating past experience. The ability to participate in interactional conversation increased their conversational control and encouraged the participants to initiate conversation. This had a positive impact on their self-esteem and confidence. Importantly, receptive skills remained stable, indicating that the introduction of the system was the major influence over the research period rather than any maturation process. The WriteTalk study confirms the importance of giving non-speaking children the ability to use narrative in conversation. However, some problems arose with the participants' use of the software. They found it difficult to move between the three applications and also had difficulty in retrieving pre-stored material within Talk:About.

Future developments. The report from the collaborating project partners emphasises that Talk:About was designed for literate adults and not for young children with language or learning difficulties. They believe that there is a need for a novel interface to a story-based system which will meet the needs of different users with different physical and cognitive functioning. This, they believe, should ideally be a system that would support the use of pictures, symbols and text so that individuals who use graphics-based communications systems can develop literacy and pragmatic language skills within an integrated learning and communication environment. Cybernetics, through its interdisciplinary history of development, has already contributed to the research literature in this type of endeavour and it is encouraging to learn that such a system is to be the focus of new research proposals.

More information about this study can be obtained from the Web site at: www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/ACprojects/writetalk/wthomepage.asp

3. Japanese "Whisper" mobile phone

Communications is one of cybernetics and systems most innovative areas of research and development. We have seen the explosion of new high-technology systems in recentt decades. High on the list of such achievements is the mobile phone, which has become not only essential for numerous applications and for personal and business links but also a scourge when used in public places and on inappropriate occasions. In science fiction, messages, for example, can be received directly by transmissions to the brain. Could we now reasonably ask whether this is a possibility for the future in real life? A report from Japan tells us this, it would seem, is more than a possibility, although the developing engineers of such prototype systems are currently concerned with the production of wearable devices where messages are received by the human body as vibrations rather than the more sophisticated "brain or thought" transmissions of sci-fi dramas.

The prototype mobile phone developed in Japan, we are told, allows its user to receive calls by putting their fingers in their ears and sending messages by speaking into their wrists. The phone is called Whisper and is worn like a watch. The important feature is that it consists of a receiver that converts audio signals into vibrations. It is designed so that the caller's voice travels through the hand, into the fingers and out into the ear canal. In the phone's wrist band there is a microphone into which the wearer can talk. This system is similar to some present-day phones which signal calls by a gentle vibration, but with the difference that you answer the phone by tapping the thumb and index finger together. For dialling and other different functions, the fingers are tapped together in different rhythms. An alternative is to use voice commands of the type already in use on some current models of mobile phones.

The credit for inventing Whisper, it is reported, goes to Masaaki Fukumoto, a senior research engineer at the NTT DoCoMo, based in Tokyo, Japan. His background is in "wearable computers" and this initially gave him the idea to develop Whisper. Surprisingly, we hear that he thinks the phone may be "an idea ahead of its time" and that people may be reluctant to wear computers. He may well be proved wrong, since there is an upsurge in interest in devising electronic "fashion devices". Already companies are producing such devices as "fashion accessories" .The main sales criterion is that the device, first, performs efficiently and then compliments the "fashion" setting.

Cyberneticians will be aware that the market in "fashion phones" has already opened up. It will soon be renamed "fashion communications". One company, Charmed Technology, offers a facility, currently a badge announcing that the wearer will allow the swapping and storing of information. The US company has a variety of ways in which this can electronically be accomplished. The Whisper mobile represents only the tip of the iceberg; there is a great deal more to come in the communications systems world of innovation.