Research
Done, Doing & Dreaming
* The following topics do not necessarily limit our research. Only our imagination does.
** For more past research topics, please refer to https://www.inseokhwang.com
Human-AI Interaction & Symbiosis
AI is rapidly becoming a commodity in every area of computing, and computing is already a commodity of everyday human life. Thus, we think ahead about the next logical step -- AI being a commodity of everyday human life. No one can exactly tell what such an AI-rich human life would look like. But the easiest way to tell some is to be a few who create a bit of its initial look. We explore various embodiments in which AI boosts everyday human-life agenda -- family, community, health, social, etc. One step further, we also investigate the other way -- unique human factors boost everyday AI. Putting both together, we envision Human-AI Symbiosis.
Related Research (done, doing & dreaming):
Pervasive Sensing & Large Language Model (LLM) for Personalized Vocabulary Assessment-Intervention for Children [CHI'24] [🏅Honorable Mention Award @ CHI'24] video
Human-AI Actuation: a novel Human+AI symbiotic model in AI-rich pervasive sensory environment [UbiComp'23] video
Personalized sleep planning system that generates individually optimal sleep schedules based on physiological sleep models and dynamic real-life constraints [UIST'22] video
AI-powered mobile photographic memento system to close the inter-generational gap [CHI'21] video [US Patent #1]
Next-generation mobile platform for symbiotic AI-rich pervasive computing ecosystem
Pervasive Sensory Augmentation for Interactive Everyday Spaces
Sensing is the cognitive gateway that opens up our everyday real-life spaces for computerization. The ever-proliferating commodity mobiles and wearables are paving a new layer of pervasive sensing, expediting the deployment in a practical and affordable manner. We explore brand-new, cost-minimal, and widely usable opportunities to turn our everyday space into one full of interactive gadgets and agents.
Related Research (done, doing & dreaming):
Ambient magnetic sensing at gyms: contactless tracking of holistic weight exercises with only a single commodity mobile [UbiComp'23] [🏅People's Choice Award for Demos @ UbiComp'23] video
Screen reader system with concurrently interlocked voice streams for compressive yet intelligible browsing [UbiComp'23 demo] video.
AI-augmented public gym: smart earable-based personal fitness coach right in your ears [SenSys'20].
A commodity surplus smartphone instantly making a dumb surface a near 3-dimensional input space [CHI'16] video [US Patent #1, #2, #3]
Mobile Extended Reality (XR) & Telepresence: Future of Human Presence
Physical presence is the basis for our real-life existence, social activities, and live experiences. However, a global pandemic or physical impairments threaten such a basis, severely limiting our real-life ability, quality of life, and even economy. We envision new technologies and designs to innovate the conventional model of human presence, to augment and extend real-space human ability, and furthermore, to drive the transcendence beyond our natural-born constraints as physical beings.
Related Research (done, doing & dreaming):
Autonomous telepresence system with intelligent heterogeneous space fusion. [MobiSys'18] video #1, video #2 [US Patent #1, #2] [Best Demo Award @ MobiSys'19]
Back-of-Device interaction to enable instant VR experiences with mobile HMDs [UIST'22 demo] video
Para-real telepresence: No more being vicarious. Towards true on-site experiences
Alternative presence: Telepresence, AI, and crowd
IoT-powered Real-world Social Computing
Over the last decade, online social platforms opened up trillion-dollar businesses, reshaped the ways we meet & work, and even catalyzed new fields of science to emerge. We strive to unfold the next leap of social platforms, which are now homed in the real world, powered by tiny smart things on and around us, helping our real social life healthier & enjoyable, empowering us to interact in unprecedented ways, and providing new labs and markets to social scientists and entrepreneurs, respectively.
Related Research (done, doing & dreaming):
New socio-physical layer to democratize public IoT systems [MobiSys'21] video
Mobile-cloud platform for infrastructure-less crowd localization & mass-scale social interactivity [MobiSys'17, GetMobile'18] video [US Patent #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8] [Media Coverage: NewSientist, IBM Research Blog] [Best Video Award @ MobiSys'17]
Pervasive smart mirror for open-ended facilitation of parental reflective functioning [UbiComp'20]
Wearable 24/7 intelligent agent for out-of-clinic care to remedy language development disorders [CSCW'14, Pervasive Computing'19] [US Patent] [Best Paper Award @ CSCW'14]
Smartwatch system to promote new workplace social memes [UbiComp'14] video
On-device AI: Acceleration for Pervasive AI
These days, at every blink of an eye, we are witnessing a new advance of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning technologies. Imagine our body, personal space, and social space soon to be full of intelligent things and empowered by intelligent services. In this light, our missions are: (1) to spur the evolution of mobile & wearable computing platforms to accommodate machine learning principles and embodiments to be more efficient, usable, and interactive; (2) to premiere first-of-a-kind services powered by AI and deep learning on tiny platforms in various facets of our everyday life.
Related Research (done, doing & dreaming):
On-device CNN inference acceleration with mobile-native sensor fusion for AR applications [🏅Best Poster Runner-up @ HotMobile'20] [US Patent]
Fast build-time for sluggish run-time? No more trade-off: Accelerating voice-enabled agents backed by proprietary cloud APIs [Pervasive Computing'19] [US Patent]
