Alexandra Giasi

Mem-Friend

Gathering and retaining information from others, in a professional setting or during day-to-day interactions, presents challenges that my project attempts to overcome. A good memory or good record keeping skills are often required to remember minute details from important conversations. Under professional circumstances, forgetting such details may result in repercussions in the workplace, legal consequences, or in the medical field, serious health effects. In our day-to-day interactions with others, persons with poor memories, or at the extreme, those affected with such disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, may require assistance remembering names, dates, faces, or simply recalling conversations had with others. My program attempts to address these issues by identifying the person standing directly in front of the user, recording and transcribing conversations had, and providing a summary of these conversations and other identifying information on a heads-up display.

Solutions already exist for facial recognition and recordation and transcription of speech. The main technical challenge that this project presents is the summarization of audio recordings, and the implementation of all three features in one application.

The form that this project will take is an application on the Google Glass. This technology was chosen as the least obstructive method of obtaining all required information. Previous methods of obtaining the data required, such as note-taking or using a smart phone, would require the user to break eye-contact, or fiddle with a distracting device. The Google Glass will allow the user to retain the effect of having unaided interactions by using the Glass’s hands-free interface and discrete design.

Bio: Alexandra Giasi is obtaining a B.S. in Computer Science at the George Washington University. She also obtained a J.D in the Spring of 2014, and is interested in pursuing a career in intellectual property law.

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