At This Hackathon, Alexa Gives You More Than Just the Weather

At USC'south recent "Voice Assistants for All" hackathon, 5 teams of engineers, product designers, cognitive systems researchers, clinical data scientists, voice communication technologists, and programmers competed for $10,000 and a chance to take their epitome to the side by side stage.

The challenge? Make an in-abode, vocalization-based digital assistant to amend the lives and healthcare outcomes of people with developmental disabilities.

The result was jointly hosted by the WITH Foundation, which promotes comprehensive and accessible healthcare solutions, and USC's Center for Torso Calculating (CBC), a digital wellness enquiry and innovation center, founded in 2006 by Dr. Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist.

In keeping with its tech-forward mission, CBC is now located at Playa Vista, aka "Silicon Embankment," not far from Google, YouTube, Facebook, and a host of budding startups in the multifarious co-working spaces.

PCMag stopped by solar day two of the hackathon to sentinel a hyped up but understandably exhausted group do concluding presentations after an all-nighter.

"Our intent is to encourage solutions that make sure patients are involved in controlling regarding their intendance," Dr. Saxon explained. "And that their expectations for their health care and health care needs are known and met."

Five judges—from industry, philanthropy, and academia—assembled at the front of the auditorium in comfy armchairs. The seats weren't red, and judges didn't take buttons to make them swivel like The Voice, but they did have mics and, after each presentation, participants were peppered with questions and feedback.

Almost all of the teams used Amazon's Alexa platform, which must accept depressed those industry advisers wearing Google T-shirts in the audition.

The products were varied in tone, level of complexity, and objective. "Meddi" was a Tongue Processing (NLP) concept that provided useful prompts to patients about daily medications.

"Say Nutrient," a nutrition-based interactive vocalization assistant, gave on-the-spot recommendations based on a patient's blood carbohydrate level, medical history, and other vital factors. The audition laughed when one of "Team Say Food" leaned toward the Alexa onstage and said: "Alexa, tin can I have orangish juice today?" and Alexa responded with: "Yikes! Endeavor green tea instead."

The idea that really captured my imagination—considering it was so very imaginative—was "Eidla," a remote companion intended to combat social isolation from Akanimoh Adeleye and Alyssa Kubota, both PhD students in Computer science at UC San Diego.

Eidla takes users on a fantastical trip to another globe, where they come across strange and marvelous inhabitants. The idea is to engage people in a purely verbal/audio exchange and keep the psyche intact. Eidla would acquire over fourth dimension to retain data and deliver conversational gambits about the person's hobbies, family unit members, and memories. It was charming; I wouldn't mind having one of those myself to conversation to late at night later on typing furiously to encounter a borderline.

It was clear, though, that "Squad Amplify" had the most marketable product. Brian Cohn and Dr. Chris Laine both piece of work in a biomedical engineering lab at USC: Dr. Laine is a Enquiry Banana Professor and a specialist in clinical conditions (Parkinson's, essential tremor, and cerebral palsy) and oral-motor command, while Cohn is an NSF Graduate Fellow with a background in computational biology.

Their concept is a digital speech communication therapist that tin can ascertain whether children with cerebral palsy are improving their speech patterns.

Part of Amplify utilizes a singing competition and embeds useful words over and over again (robots never become tired or judge) so children become comfortable practicing to humor-filled prompts. Amplify showed existent flair in both coding and product design, in a "cull your own take chances" style, complete with interdimensional travel and talk of magic crystals to stimulate the child'south imagination.

Although they had a few false starts getting Alexa to cooperate ("This is what happens when yous make people stay up all night," laughed Cohn onstage), the two scientists conspicuously have something useful to meet market needs. The judges thought so besides, and they were awarded the $10,000 pinnacle prize.

Later, we caught up with Dr. Saxon, via email, for her feedback on the mean solar day.

"I was most impressed by the creativity of the approaches to the problem of coming together the needs of adults and seniors with disabilities," she wrote. "It made me realize that once we break with the image that the patient and intendance provider need to be in the same place at the same time, everything is possible."

Professor Saxon pointed out that the hackathon used pretty low-price devices.

"While leveraging a $200 dollar consumer device, our teams provided solutions to major bug against adults with disabilities, addressing continuous rehabilitation services, social isolation, diet, connexion to community and the need for continuous health assessments. I couldn't exist more proud of the results of this hackathon."

Squad Amplify will present their research at the twelfth Almanac Trunk Calculating Conference on Sept. 28.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/29158/at-this-hackathon-alexa-gives-you-more-than-just-the-weather

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