Hands-free Eyes-free Text Messaging

1. Hands-free Eyes-free Text Messaging Derek Woodman, Jeffrey Gehring, Abdullah Alshalan Mobile Computing Fall 2010

2. Introduction • Our goal was to make an android application that makes it save to drive while texting • Common place to have a hand-free system for placing phone calls • We are delivering a system that does this for texting • The system is hands-free and eyes-free so the driver still focus on driving

3. How? • We used several APIs available in the android operating system • TTS – text to speech • STT – speech to text • Messaging API • Used Android because it is free and had access to lab phones • Used APIs because well documented and didn’t have to write our own • Android provides the tools • We put them together and performed testing.

4. Design

5. Application Demo • In class demo of SafeText • Prepare to be amazed!

6. Testing • Most papers we have seen are concerned with how fast or accurate the speech system works • Wefocused on how well it improves the user’s attention – the main goal! • Our testing focused on the user’s reaction time.

7. Stop Light Simulator • Shown picture of a stoplight • The light will change periodically • User asked to react to the light changing • Each user was tested under the following conditions • No texting • Regular texting • Voice texting • Measure the reaction time

8. Stop Light Simulator http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d3em1pdBcU

9. Results

10. Discussion • Our test shows that our application improves the reaction time of users while texting • Reaction time reduced by more than half • Android’s speech recognition was better than expected. • Issues with Android – learning curve • Several threads running at once • Have to use function call backs to make sure processing has finished

11. Questions?