Challenges 2013

2nd ABF CHALLENGES Workshop

“How neuroscientists and computer scientists seek to understand the functional uses of vision and develop innovative technologies enabling visually impaired people to increase their independence and social inclusion.’’

This workshop has been included in the 2013 Year of Italian Culture in United States: Italian and American scientists have been invited to participate to this multidisciplinary group of excellence in order to exchange their achievements and lay new bridges among the two cultures.

Goal of the workshop:

 Find a new understanding of the complex challenge of enabling visually impaired people in getting and achieving a better autonomous life via a multidisciplinary approach.

The objective of the workshop is setting up a dialogue among scientists adopting different solutions and approaches to the important research question: how are neuroscientists and computer scientists working to understand the functional uses of vision and develop innovative technologies enabling visually impaired people to increase their independence and social inclusion?

This problem needs to be reformulated beyond the classical boundaries of each involved discipline in order to achieve innovative solutions based on a new understanding of such a complex issue.

The 2nd ABF CHALLENGES Workshop will put together multi-disciplinary scientists that are the excellence in their fields to let them share results and ideas and find together such new understanding.

In order to achieve a better autonomous life as well as to increase the independence and the social inclusion for a blind person, different approaches have been tackled.

At the workshop, each scientist will give a short lecture on his/her solution and point of view; then, during a final panel section, they will discuss together how to get a unique multidisciplinary new understanding.

At the workshop, several studies will be presented concerning: the neurological aspects of vision; retinal prosthesis; the design of assistive technologies helping blind people in the autonomous navigation and orientation, either outdoors or indoors, avoiding obstacles; spotting texts; assistive technologies to efficiently socialize and recognize faces and people expressions; games and tools helping blind children. Furthermore answers to the question of what is vision without sight and what is vision in terms of perceptual and cognitive functioning for the blinds will be discussed.

All the scientists are approaching the problem from their own perspective, but they are all answering the same question:

Is it possible for visually impaired people, thanks to technology and science, to live an autonomous life, be independent, work and socialize?

 The workshop will take place at MIT, where, within the framework of the Challenge Program, the Andrea Bocelli Foundation is funding a multi-disciplinary research group for the creation of assistive technologies that allow visually impaired people to safely walk indoors and outdoors, spot text and recognize faces, and for the production of a new tactile device that can be used to interact and communicate with a blind person. Part of this project and the results achieved in the last two years will be presented at the workshop on December6^th.

Grier Room, Building 34-401, MIT

8.30-9.15 am    Opening: Andrea Bocelli, Jeff L. Newton – MIT Vice President, Authorities.

Chair: L. Giarré, ABF Advisory Board and Università di Palermo, lg@andreabocellifoundation.org

09:30-10.10 am “MIT Fifth Sense project”- S. TELLER and Coworkers, MIT, US,  teller@csail.mit.edu

10:10-10:30 am Coffee break

Assistive technologies

• 10.30-10:50 am “Computer vision – based assistive technology for the visually impaired”- J. COUGHLAN, Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, US, coughlan@ski.org
• 10:50-11:10 am “Social sense making for the visually impaired”- M. PELILLO, Università di Venezia, IT, pelillo@dsi.unive.it

Neuroscience

• 11:10-11:30 am “Retinal prosthesis for the blind”- S. WEILAND, Doheny Retina Institute, University of Southern California, US, jweiland@med.usc.edu
• 11:30-11:50 am “What do the eye and the hand tell us about the brain, and how this can be useful to people”- A.BICCHI^, P. Pietrini*, E. Ricciardi*, M. Santello^^ (^Università di Pisa, IT*Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, IT^^Arizona State University, US), bicchi@ing.unipi.it

Vision

• 11:50-12:10 am “Blind vision: perceptual and cognitive functioning in the blind”- Z. CATTANEO, Università di Milano-Bicocca, IT, zaira.cattaneo@unimib.it
• 12:10-12:30 pm “(Computer) Vision without sight”- R.MANDUCHI, University of California at Santa Cruz, US, manduchi@soe.ucsc.edu

12:30-1:50 pm Lunch and Exhibitions

Chair: S. Teller, MIT, teller@csail.mit.edu

Vision

• 1:50-2:10 pm  “Interactive crowd powered access technology”- J. BIGHAM, Carnegie Mellon University, Human Computer Interaction Institute, US, jbigham@cs.rochester.edu
• 2:10-2:30 pm  “How visual cortex works: improving machine vision tools for the visually impaired”- T. POGGIO MIT, US, tp@csail.mit.edu

Games and Children

• 2:30-2:50 pm  “Learning to see late in life”- P. SINHA, MIT, US, psinha@mit.edu
• 2:50-3:10 pm  “Educational game software for blind children”- L. MERABET, Harvard University, US, lotfi_merabet@meei.harward.edu

Assistive Technology

• 3:10-3:30 pm  ”3D tactile models from paintings: an assessment of possible computer aided methodologies”-  L. GOVERNI, Università di Firenze, IT, lapo.governi @unifi.it
• 3:30- 3:50 pm “Design for user empowerment: creating blind scientists and engineers”- R. LADNER, Washington University, US, ladner@cs.washington.edu
• 3.50-4.10 pm “The museum of pure form”- M.BERGAMASCO, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, IT, massimo.bergamasco@ssup.it

4:10-4:30 pm Coffee break

4:30-5:00 pm  PANEL DISCUSSION 

Chair: M. Dahleh, MIT, dahleh@mit.edu

“Find a new understanding of the complex challenge of enabling visually impaired people in getting and achieving a better autonomous life via a multidisciplinary approach”

Panelists: U. Faraguna, T. Vecchi, A. Ruell, J. Coughlan, S. Teller, L. Giarré

5:00 – 5:10 pm    Closing: L. BIANCALANI, President Andrea Bocelli Foundation

1)

Title: Assistive technologies developed at the Department of Information Engineering of Pisa University

Name: Luca Fanucci

Affiliation: Department of Information Engineering – Università di Pisa- IT

Email: luca.fanucci@iet.unipi.it

Team Members: Massimiliano Donati, Fabrizio Iacopetti, Roberto Roncella, Mauro Turturici

2)

Title:  Watching and sensing with my smartphone, a cheap and pocket-sized navigation device

Name: Pierluigi Gallo

Affiliation: Department of Energy, Information Engineering and Mathematical Modeling – Università di Palermo – IT

Email: pierluigi.gallo@unipa.it

Team  Members: Ilenia Tinnirello, Laura Giarré, Domenico Garlisi, Daniele Croce, Adriano Fagiolini

3)

Title:  The Museum of Pure Form: a General Research Framework for Studying Haptic Perception in Virtual Environments

Name: M. Bergamasco

Affiliation: PERCRO, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, IT

Email: bergamasco@sssup.it

Team Members:  Perceptual Robotics Laboratory (www.percro.org) of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.

4)

Title: Video Game based approaches for Developing Navigation Skills

Name:  L. Merabet

Affiliation: Harvard Medical School – Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary

Email: lotfi_merabet@meei.harvard.edu

Team Members: Lindsay Yazzolino, Gabriella Hirsch, Corinna Bauer, Jaime Sanchez, Carroll Center for the Blind

5)

Title:  Bicycle for a blind rider

Name: Seth Teller

Affiliation: CSAIL, MIT, US

Email: teller@mit.edu

Team Members:   Ryan Fish, Steven Keyes

6)

Title: Wearable environmental text spotting

Name: Nick Wang

Affiliation: CSAIL, MIT, US

Email: hchengwang@csail.mit.edu

Team Members: Chelsea Finn, Ben Mattinson, Rahul Namdev, Seth Teller

7)

Title: Wearable acquaintance recognizer

Name: David Hayden

Affiliation: CSAIL, MIT, US

Email: dshayden@mit.edu

Team Members: Rob Miller,  Seth Teller

8)

Title: Tactile display Prototype

Name: Carol  Livermore

Affiliation:  Northeastern University, US

Email: livermore@neu.edu

Team Members:  Luis Fernando Velasquez-Heller, Seth Teller, Xin Xie, Yuri Zaitsev

ABFMIT 2013 – Challenges Workshop

Friday, December 6th, Cambridge

www.abfmit2013.com – www.andreabocellifoundation.org– www.povertyactionlab.org