January 24, 2019
Two teams of SFC students from the lab of Yasuhito Nakanishi, a professor at the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, won three awards at the Student Innovation Contest held during the international conference ACM UIST 2018 in Berlin, Germany, from October 14, 2018.
UIST (User Interface Software and Technology) is a top conference in the field of user interfaces, sponsored by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), a US-based society that plays a central role in global research activities in the information field. In the Student Innovation Contest, part of the program, Team FOX won the first-place “Most Creative Award” in the “Most Creative” category, selected by a panel of three judges, while Team VoiSports received the second-place “Honorable Mention.” Furthermore, Team FOX also won the “People's Choice Award,” which is the first-place prize in the “People’s Choice” category determined by votes from conference attendees.
[Team FOX]
Fumito Saito (1st-year master's student, Graduate School of Media and Governance)
Ryosuke Fujiki (4th-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies)
Makoto Amano (3rd-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies)
[Team VoiSports]
Motoki Watanabe (4th-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies)
Nobumitsu Tomizawa (3rd-year student, Faculty of Policy Management)
Soma Sakata (2nd-year student, Faculty of Policy Management)
Team FOX (Fuzzy Order eXperience) proposed a perceptual interface that infers ambiguous human desires. Instead of users explicitly communicating their requests, the system uses a depth camera, gesture recognition, and an emotion analysis API to infer their desires. As a concrete system, they implemented this function in a cotton candy-making robot. At the venue, they demonstrated it as a food fabrication system that estimates the color and size of cotton candy a user wants, then creates it on the spot for them to taste.
Team VoiSports proposed "VoiSports," a new e-sport where players control robots using the volume and manner of their voice. It offers an experience that can be enjoyed regardless of gender or physical size, and even when both hands are full with food and drinks at social gatherings like those at conferences, serving as an icebreaker for communication. They demonstrated an archery and hammer throw system that can be played using only the "timing of shouting" and the "direction of the voice," by integrating a microphone array with robots that launch balls and arrows.
Comments from Team FOX
We are extremely happy to have received the top awards in two of the three categories: “Most Creative” and “People’s Choice.” At UIST, researchers from all over the world gather, and we were able to speak with researchers we have long admired, which was a great learning experience. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Professor Yasuhito Nakanishi for his daily guidance in advancing this research, and to all the members of the lab who supported us. (Ryosuke Fujiki)
Comments from Team VoiSports
All of us on the team are delighted to have received an Honorable Mention in the “Most Creative” category. Even though we are a team of all undergraduate students, we had the experience of giving a demo presentation to top international researchers at an international conference. We were also inspired by seeing many research presentations and experiencing various new uses of technology firsthand. We hope to apply this experience to our future research. We would like to thank our lab mates who worked hard with us, and Professor Yasuhito Nakanishi. (Motoki Watanabe)
Source: Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) Office, General Affairs (Public Relations)