Artificial Intelligence, Sign Language, and Accessibility Center receives NSF EAGER research grant to build a Panopticon studio

The Artificial Intelligence, Sign Language, and Accessibility (AIASL) Center, led by Dr. Raja Kushalnagar, has received a one-year grant from the National Science Foundation. This grant is part of a program that supports early research ideas that have the potential to make big changes but have not yet been tested.

The grant will be used to create a special studio, called the Panopticon studio, that uses 120 cameras to capture video of multiple people interacting in different ways. These cameras record various types of data, like high-definition video, infrared, and 3D images. The studio will process this information to create detailed 3D models of people's movements in space, showing how their bodies move and interact over time.

The project will also develop new algorithms to help track and recreate these movements more accurately. This data will be stored in one place for researchers to use, making it easier to conduct studies on sign language and communication in deaf communities.

By sharing these high-quality datasets, the studio aims to save time and resources for researchers, who often have to create their own smaller, less reliable datasets. This shared resource will allow researchers to do better, more consistent work without having to start from scratch every time. It will also help improve the quality of research results by making them easier to reproduce and verify.

The AIASL team, led by Dr. Kushalnagar, is working on this project along with the Office of Campus Design and Planning, led by Richard Dougherty.