An automated method has been developed to detect male eiders (COEI_M) on aerial multispectral images. Potential bird regions were determined after filtering the images with an average filter, masking out the ocean background and the land areas, and applying a watershed segmentation algorithm. Large and small objects were then removed. For each remaining object and its neighborhood, spectral and geometrical variables were computed. The variables that were not significantly different between the true and false COEI_M classes were removed based on a p-value of higher than 0.08 computed by an ANOVA. The objects were divided into training and validation datasets. A support vector machine using a radial basis function was used to classify the objects in the two classes. We achieved an overall accuracy of 98.6% with the validation data set. The user's accuracy and producer's accuracy for the true COEI_M class in the validation dataset were 86.4% and 92.7%, respectively.

We describe the development of a system for recognizing dolphin whistles on the CHAT (cetacean hearing and telemetry) wearable underwater computer system. An Nvidia Jetson TK1 single board computer was installed in the existing chat systems to improve processing power and overall system power efficiency. The inclusion of a GPU allowed the system to recognize in real time dolphin whistles varied in both pitch and time by using a 192khz Fast Fourier Transform for spectral analysis, linear convolution filters for pattern extraction, and dynamic time warping for pattern recognition.

Working on a wearable technology interdisciplinary project team can be challenging because of a lack of shared understanding between different fields, and a lack of ability in cross-disciplinary communication. We describe an interdisciplinary collaborative design process used for creating a wearable musical instrument with a musician. Our diverse team used drawing and example artifacts/toolkits to overcome communication and gaps in knowledge. We view this process in the frame of Susan Leigh Star's description of a boundary object, and against a similar process used in another musical / computer science collaboration with the group Duran Duran.

Interacting with mobile technology while in-motion has become a daily activity for many of us. Common sense leads one to believe that texting with a mini-qwerty keyboard while mobile can be dangerous since users are distracted and not paying attention to the environment. Previous studies have found that mobility negatively impacts text entry performance for novice participants typing on virtual keyboards on touch screen mobile phones. We investigate the impact of mobility on expert users' ability to quickly and accurately input text on mobile phones equipped with fixed-key mini-qwerty keyboards. In total, 36 participants completed 600 minutes of typing on mini-qwerty keyboards (300 minutes training up to expertise) in three mobility conditions (seated, standing, and walking) generating almost 4,000,000 characters across all conditions. Surprisingly, we found that walking has a significant impact on expert typing speeds but does not significantly impact expert accuracy rates.

Computer-mediated interaction for working dogs is an important new domain for interaction research. In domestic settings, touchscreens could provide a way for dogs to communicate critical information to humans. In this paper we explore how a dog might interact with a touchscreen interface. We observe dogs' touchscreen interactions and record difficulties against what is expected of humans' touchscreen interactions. We also solve hardware issues through screen adaptations and projection styles to make a touchscreen usable for a canine's nose touch interactions. We also compare our canine touch data to humans' touch data on the same system. Our goal is to understand the affordances needed to make touchscreen interfaces usable for canines and help the future design of touchscreen interfaces for assistive dogs in the home.

We present our findings from the Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book Workshops. The workshops were designed as the first in a series of collaborative design experiences that introduce small groups of faculty/students teams from particular design disciplines to the concept of electronic textile interfaces (ETIs) through the use of a textile interface “swatch book” with the support of technician/facilitators. The work here focuses on the experience of the working relationship between the designer participants and the more technologically oriented facilitators, rather than on how much the participants learned about technology. The contribution of this work is a an exploration into understanding how through the use of technology we can bridge the gap between the distant discipline expertise needed to work on projects like ETIs.

Many installations research efforts today explore how to engage participants with embedded digital content and applications in interactive environments. Yet the interactive design is largely determined by the constraints and requirements of the underlying sensing technologies. Such constrains result in a limited dialog between the user and the interactive installations. Silent Mutations is an interactive installation that is controlled by participants/users moving throughout the space. The installation has been conceived as a material and immaterial reflection of our relationship with physical environments and embedded technologies. The goal of developing the installation was to offer a valid questioning of the current responsiveness of interactive installations and advance a designed interactive environment towards engaging narrative conversations of people with physical spaces. Between analog and digital, using simple hardware systems coupled with sensing technologies, a cognitive space was created with conversational emerging behaviors for human communication.