Sketch Recognition Research @ HMC

For the past 5 years I have been working on a long-term sketch recognition project to build and evaluate a sketch-based tool for digital circuit education.

Smarter Educational Software Through Sketch Recognition

Project Summary

The central goal of this research is to construct and deploy computer simulation tools capable of understanding students' hand-drawn diagrams. The results of free-sketch recognition research cannot yet be incorporated into end-user applications for two reasons. First, free-sketch recognition is not sufficiently robust to incorporate into useful tools. Second, little is known about how to build usable interfaces that incorporate free-sketch recognition. This work will bridge the gap between free-sketch recognition technology and its end-users by focusing on its application to undergraduate engineering design. The outcome of this work will be improved techniques for free-sketch recognition, guidelines for incorporating free-sketch recognition into usable interfaces, and educational sketch-based simulation tools.

You can download a couple videos of the project here:

A silly and fun video, that shows off the system at the end of summer 2011 [.m4v, 20MB]

A more "serious" video, end of summer 2010 (no visual functionality difference from current system) [.avi, 27MB, no audio]

Software and Data for Download

A central goal of our project is to develop tools that others will find useful. There are a number of tools and data, including LogiSketch itself, available on our download page.

Acknowledgments

This work is funded by an NSF CAREER award, under Grant Number IIS-0546809.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

HMC Sketchers People

PI: Christine Alvarado, HMC Computer Science
Faculty collaborator: Sarah Harris, HMC Engineering

Current Students

Kiley Sobel, HMC '12, double Computer Science/Psychology

Former Students

Chris Acon: HMC '07, Engineering
Denis Aleshin: HMC '10, Joint Math/Computer Science
Anton Bakalov: HMC '09, Computer Science
James Brown: HMC '11, Computer Science
Ned Burns: Pomona '08, Computer Science
Kevin Chan: HMC '11, Engineering
Howard Chen: HMC '07, Engineering
Andrew Danowitz: HMC '08, Engineering
Lilian de Greef: HMC '12, Computer Science
Eric Doi: HMC '09, Computer Science
Josh Ehrlich: HMC '11, Computer Science
Jason Fennell: HMC '08, Joint Math/Computer Science
Marty Field: HMC '10, Computer Science
Fiona Foo: HMC '12, Computer Science
Emily Fujimoto: HMC '11, Computer Science
Laurel Fullerton: HMC '07, Engineering
Sam Gordon: HMC '08, Engineering
Kris Karr: HMC '09, Computer Science
Andy Kearney: HMC '13, Computer Science
Alexa Keizur: HMC '12, Computer Science
Ellen Kephart, HMC '08, Computer Science
Michael Lazzereschi: Pomona '06, Computer Science
Calvin Loncaric: HMC '12, Computer Science
Miranda Parker: HMC '14, Computer Science
Scott Parkey: HMC '09, Computer Science
Alice Paul: HMC '12, Computer Science
Jessi Peck: HMC '13, Computer Science
Max Pfluger: HMC '07, Engineering
Ben Pollard, Pomona '12, double Computer Science/Physics
Sara Sheehan: MIT (was at HMC for 1 year)
Joe Simons: HMC '08, Computer Science
Devin Smith: HMC '09, Computer Science
Mike Roberts: HMC '08, Computer Science
Raquel Robinson: HMC '10, Engineering
Paul Wais: HMC '07, Computer Sceince
Matt Weiner: HMC '08, Engineering
Aaron Wolin: HMC '07, Computer Science
Alice Zhu: HMC '10, Computer Science