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Project Oxygen: Towards Pervasive, Human-Centered Computing

Victor Zue

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Director, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

The Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) and the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) held its third SMA-ILP Seminar on Thursday, November 6, 2002. The guest lecturer was Victor ZUE, MIT Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Director, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. A total of 175 seminar participants from the three universities; MIT, NUS, and NTU witnessed the live broadcast via Internet2. The facilitators for the evening were Professor Tomas LOZANO-PEREZ from MIT, Professor CHUA Tat Seng of NUS, and Professor NGAN King Ngi of NTU.

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Project Oxygen

Launched in 1999, Project Oxygen and its collaborative group of scientists and researchers are working to radically change the way human beings and machines manage information-related activities. A joint project with approximately 150 individuals participating from the Laboratory for Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Oxygen was initially funded by the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). In June of 2000, the Oxygen Alliance was formed by partnering with six world-class companies that include ACER, Delta Electronics, Hewlett Packard, NTT, Nokia, and Phillips.

Professor ZUE shared the milestones and achievements of Project Oxygen, and spoke of the unique Oxygen prototype being built for the Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT, which will house both the Laboratory for Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence Lab by 2004.

Components of Oxygen

Professor ZUE focused on four components of the Oxygen Project in his lecture:

Smart Computation – New computer architecture, programming languages, and compilers
Smart Space – Computation embedded in the environment and serving people
Nomadic Lifestyle Technologies – Networks that support devices that move about with people
Anthropomorphic Interfaces – Computers that cater to human capabilities and needs

1. Smart Computation

Project Oxygen is working to create a new type of instructive architecture that would permit software to orchestrate all available resources and give best possible performance in terms of efficiency and computation using Projects RAW and STREAMIT. Project RAW utilizes a new type of chip with 16 tiles, each one with a simple RISC pipeline that will help develop a hand-held device that can download appropriate code and function in changing environments. Project STREAMIT is a compiler program geared toward streaming data, where original and optimized code are compared to deliver more than three times the performance using the RAW chip.

2. Smart Space

The Intelligent Room (E21) will make use of speech, vision, and gesture. Range-based tracking will correlate between the visual image and the acoustic signal to redirect microphones during meetings or lectures. A robust software infrastructure will manage resources and support multi-modal interactions.

3. Support for Nomadic Lifestyles

The following technologies will help us provide for our future lifestyles:

• Location Awareness (CRICKET) – Provides location-based information delivery using two devices — a listener, which is a passive device attached to a person or device, and active ceiling-mounted beacons using radio frequency signals and ultrasound signals, which compute distances in question.
  
• Transparent Mobility (MIGRATE) – Allows host mobility by searching for the best possible networking resources to establish connectivity between two devices. MIGRATE makes use of the dynamic update feature of the domain name system (DNS) to maintain the connection by negotiating a different IP address, resuming computation without involving a third party.
  
• Intentional Naming System (INS) – Expresses needs to nomadic machines thereby allowing you to find the nearest resource available in any given area (i.e., a printer or display). It makes use of a language that describes a desired resource and tells the machine what you want, rather than where to find it.
  
• Privacy and Security – Increased security for nomadic lifestyles is a necessity.

4. Anthropomorphic Interface

A variety of modalities will soon be used to identify human beings in an effort to explore audio-visual symbiosis in an untethered, wireless, and roaming environment. Advances now include conversational interfaces where machines respond to audio requests in multiple languages; extremely natural speech synthesizers; photo-realistic animations; and realistic avatars.

In Summary

Professor ZUE explained that Project Oxygen is working toward pervasive human-centered computing where computing and communication are free and work to serve human beings. "We have made great strides in hand-held smart computing, smart space, networking, and interfaces that integrate speech with vision," he said. "Project Oxygen continues to allow for a rewarding amount of collaboration between laboratories and partner companies, and is a great deal of fun for all involved."

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