Spring 2025 CS180/280: Human-Machine Interfaces

An international team project being organized by Professors Tom Austin and Jon Pearce

·        Spend Spring semester working remotely with students in Germany and scientists at SRI International.

·        Work with SRI’s bRight platform.

·        Earn 3 units of CS180/280 credit.

·        Travel to Germany for the final project presentation.

·        Participate in lots of fun excursions in both Germany and the Bay Area.

This Spring I am organizing a team of four or five students who will work with five students from THI-- Technische Hochschule in Ingolstadt, Germany on a project sponsored by SRI International. The project has yet to be defined, but will be in the area of human-machine interaction. Here are the previous projects:

·        2024: The team designed and built a cockpit simulator for the F16 that reconfigures itself based on threat levels and pilot stress levels.

·        2023: The team designed an interface to be used by a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot to control a fleet of drones searching for a wounded soldier in hostile territory.

·        2022: The team built a concept modeler that bRight used to extract common knowledge from WikiData.

Several participants received offers of SRI internships.

Here are a few details:

·        bRIGHT is a human-machine interaction platform developed at SRI International. It uses biometric data and context modeling to anticipate the needs of users working on problems that require rapid decision-making and that involve overwhelming amounts of data. Application areas include disaster management, disease containment, air traffic control, counter-terrorism, and cyber-warfare.

·        Team members will work remotely with a team of four students from THI-- Technische Hochschule in Ingolstadt, Germany.

·        The project is scheduled to begin mid-February with a week of orientation meetings on Zoom. During these meetings students will meet their THI counterparts as well as their SRI project directors. Tasks will be defined and assigned.

·        The team will meet on Zoom at least once per week to report on their progress. All students are expected to make contributions during there meetings. It is also expected that students will communicate regularly during the week using a variety of collaboration tools.

·        Early in the semester THI students will travel to SJSU for in-person meetings, team building, and excursions to local attractions.

·        The project is scheduled to end in early June when the SJSU team will fly to Ingolstadt, Germany for a week of presentations. Unfortunately, travel costs will not be covered this year. Participants will have to pay their own airfare ($1000 - $2000) as well as room and board in Germany ($35/day for bed and breakfast).

·        SJSU team members will receive 3 units of elective credit for either CS180 or CS280.

·        Applicants should have strong Java programming and communication skills as well as the ability to quickly learn technological platforms required by the project. Experience with Javascript, React, Redux, and graph databases (Tinkergraph, Janusgraph, Gremlin query language) would also be useful but not necessary. Basic knowledge of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning might also be useful.

·        All of the above is subject to any constraints imposed by the COVID pandemic, visa requirements, and SRI security requirements..

·        Interested students should:

o   Send me an email, if possible, indicating your interest (scale: 1 – 10) by December 22, if possible.

o   Complete the application form by January 15, 2025.

·        Questions? Contact thomas.austin@sjsu.edu or jon.pearce@sjsu.edu.

Photos

Hiking in the Alps 2023

 

Alpine summit 2022

Test driving an F-16 at SRI 2024

Hiking in the redwoods, Santa Cruz 2024

THI lab hours before the final presentation, 2024

Celebrating success, Ingolstadt 2024