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17 Jun 2002
In the next century, a personal computer could know from the inflection in your voice -- or by a smile or frown -- what you want it to do.
At the National Science Foundation's engineering research center at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, a team of university researchers is investigating more natural ways to interact with computers than through a mouse or keyboard. The scientists have several partners in the effort, including the film and computer industries, along with federal, state, and local governments. NSF has committed $12 million over the next five years to the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) to overcome numerous engineering, technological, and even psychological barriers that currently prevent "blue sky" visions of multimedia computing from appearing on the nation's desktops.
Chrysostomos L. Nikias, the associate dean of USC's engineering school and the center's director, points out, for example, that although it is relatively easy to search large amounts of computerized text to find key words, it is much more difficult to search a segment of digitized video for a single image. Storing and delivering video, each frame of which contains huge amounts of data, also is a tough technical challenge.
Breakthroughs in these areas could produce sweeping changes in fields as wide-ranging as medicine, film, manufacturing, and education. The center's research may one day make it possible for high-school students to conduct "virtual experiments" in chemistry or biology on home computers before coming to class. Or for film editors to combine hundreds of digitally stored sounds instantly on a movie soundtrack. Or for doctors to share three-dimensional data from distant operating rooms. Or even for aerospace workers to don special glasses that superimpose electronic blueprints or X-ray video on a aircraft body to guide them in assembly work, Nikias added.
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