Augmentative and Alternative Communication Interface with a Context-based, Predictive Language Model
| dc.contributor.advisor | Matuszek, Cynthia | |
| dc.contributor.author | Lewis, Timothy Arthur | |
| dc.contributor.department | Computer Science and Electrical Engineering | |
| dc.contributor.program | Computer Science | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-01-29T18:12:11Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2021-01-29T18:12:11Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-01-01 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Communication is ubiquitous in the world. The need to describe one's needs and desires is a necessity in all aspects of life. When a person loses the ability to physically speak, and the motor skills to activate speech systems that require physical input, there are limited alternatives for communication. Eye-gaze tracking offers unique opportunities to support communication; however, many of the current eye-gaze tracking communication programs are unintuitive, inaccurate, and outdated. Many of the existing communication programs employ a visual keyboard that the user can use to visually type out the words and sentences they wish to speak. In this paper, I investigate an alternative to the standard virtual keyboard methods, developing a communicative flow that is intuitive and easy to use without speech. I create a simple application for participants to construct messages. I introduce a language model concept that gathers information about the environment and using language groundings, determines the salience of items within a scene. This, in turn, allows the language model to make context sensitive text prediction to better assist a user in communicating quickly and effectively. Using a gaze tracking device as input to the interface, I then perform a user study to evaluate the efficacy and intuitiveness of the communication device. I found that when a user is presented with context based portions of speech, they can communicate easier and quicker than with a generic language model. | |
| dc.format | application:pdf | |
| dc.genre | theses | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.13016/m2em36-lz1x | |
| dc.identifier.other | 11856 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11603/20674 | |
| dc.language | en | |
| dc.relation.isAvailableAt | The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department Collection | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Theses and Dissertations Collection | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Graduate School Collection | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Student Collection | |
| dc.source | Original File Name: Lewis_umbc_0434M_11856.pdf | |
| dc.title | Augmentative and Alternative Communication Interface with a Context-based, Predictive Language Model | |
| dc.type | Text | |
| dcterms.accessRights | Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author. | |
| dcterms.accessRights | Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan thorugh a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission. | |
| dcterms.accessRights | This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author. |