Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 06:36:46 -0500 To: kdiletin@nsf.gov From: Edward Lipson Subject: KDI proposal (KN) Cc: "Geoffrey Fox", "David Warner",         Corinna Lathan ,         Erik Viirre ,         "Edward Lipson" Letter of Intent for KDI Proposal with tentative title: "Universal Access to Education: Human-Computer Interface Technologies for the Severely Disabled" In this proposal, directed to the KDI focus area of Knowledge Networking (KN), we will propose to research and develop innovative, powerful human-computer interaction systems, particularly for individuals with severe physical disabilities such as quadriplegics. The general objective will be to connect such individuals optimally to the knowledge-base of the world. Emphasis will be placed on science and technology education applications, including computer-interfaced laboratory activities for high-school and college students. The project will promote active learning in a constructivist paradigm, in which students-often in teams that could include disabled students-help create their own knowledge by exploration and investigation. Emerging Web and commodity distributed-object technologies will enrich all our lives and in particular give new opportunities for universal access to the rich set of information sources on both the Internet and intranets. In the proposed work, we bring an interdisciplinary team from medicine, education, physics, and computer science to develop new techniques that will allow the severely disabled to access a complete educational experience at both college and precollege levels. The distributed-object approach to education allows us potentially to deliver excellent curricula at any time and any place. Our team has pioneered this using novel collaborative approaches to distance education. However the Web also provides a universal interface to which one can couple novel low-cost human-computer linkage devices which enable one to offer custom communication capabilities that are effective for even the most severely disabled. In this proposal, we focus on the latter aspect -- human-computer interfaces to web-based education -- but leverage other work by our team on enabling distance education to deliver systems that transcend the communication barriers of distance and human disabilities. Our approaches are designed quite generally, but we focus at the initial stage of our project on a few selected individuals. The project methodology will center on a growing repertoire of low-cost sensors and transducers, computer-interface boxes, and advanced visual-programming software (NeatTools) all of which we have been developing at Syracuse. NeatTools, with which one drags and drops modules to assemble data-flow networks, already includes Internet-socket modules appropriate for distributed-intelligence applications. Significant success has already been achieved on pilot projects with a brain-stem-quadriplegic high-school honors student, and a cerebral-palsy spastic-quadriplegic 7-year-old child. The work (see www.pulsar.org) is performed in close partnership with the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University (www.npac.syr.edu). To enable such individuals to lead enriching and productive lives, the project will emphasize communication and control for active learning and exploration. Accordingly, we will leverage the Web and HPCC technologies developed at NPAC, notably the Java-based Tango collaborative software, which has been designed and demonstrated successfully for distance learning and for computer-supported collaborative work. NPAC's hardware and software infrastructure will be used for our research on networking disabled individuals and also for effective coordination of the project itself, involving at least three institutions. Among the systems to be developed and tested in suitable experiments with disabled individuals in educational and home settings are: a) customizable hardware and software modules that can be appropriately configured and networked to meet the special needs of the individual, and b) specific high level systems such as eye trackers. The proposed work will contribute to the important goal of universal access to knowledge in this information and communication age. Industrial participants will include two new high-tech companies: MindTel, LLC and WebWisdom.com, LLC. Both companies were formed in 1997 in association with Syracuse University under the auspices of a) the CASE Center (Computer Applications and Software Engineering), a New York State Center for Advanced Technology, and b) InfoMall, the technology-transfer program of NPAC. The partners of MindTel are Edward Lipson and David Warner; Geoffrey Fox is a principal of WebWisdom.com. For additional information, see www.mindtel.com and www.webwisdom.com. Senior participants on the KDI project will include the following: Edward Lipson, Ph.D., Professor (PI), Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse NY 13244-1130; 315-443-9107 (fax 443-9103); (pager 315-418-1621); edlipson@syr.edu Geoffrey Fox, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Computer Science, Director Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC), Syracuse University, Syracuse NY 13244-4100; 315-443-2163; 315-443-4741 (fax); gcf@npac.syr.edu David Warner, M.D., Research Associate, Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University,  Syracuse NY 13244-4100 315-443-3875; 800-950-0849 (pager); davew@npac.syr.edu; (also: Director, Institute for Interventional Informatics, San Diego and Syracuse) Corinna Lathan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC 20064; 202-319-5095; 202-319-4499 (fax); lathan@pluto.ee.cua.edu Erik Viirre, M.D., Ph.D., Research Scientist, Human Interface Technology Laboratory, University of Washington, Box 352142, Seattle WA 98107-2142; 206-616-3071; 202-543-5380 (fax); erikv@hitl.washington.edu