Perceptual computing

Perceptual computing builds resilient systems by using common-sense reasoning to interpret data, allowing systems to adapt to adversity more naturally than rigid models. Moving from simply measuring to understanding shifts the focus from data (how much) to meaning (what is). This transition allows to interpret the world rather than just record it. By understanding this shift, the systems gain the resilience to adapt to disruptions instead of simply reacting to fixed rules.
Perceptual computing is dedicated to creating machines that sense and interpret the world like we humans do, moving beyond keyboards to more natural inputs like gestures, voice, and touch. We bridge the gap between human intuition and machine logic, using sensors, actuators, and fuzzy logic to process imprecise data. With our projects, we move from mere probabilities to viable possibilities, hence enriching summative structures with human-centric, intuitive ones.
  • Streetwise

    With the overall goal of improving living spaces and urban planning, Streetwise is a project aiming at understanding people’s perceptions of the living space. Crowdsourcing campaigns are used to collect data about people’s perceptions of the environment (e.g., the sense of safety and the livability of a certain place), and some advanced machine learning techniques are applied to understand and reproduce human assessments. The resulting model allows a capillary mapping of the perceptions of several aspects related to the life of a certain area, as well as the evaluation of planned (simulated) environments.

    See https://streetwise.space/ for more information.

    Human-IST collaborators: Jhonny Pincay, Moreno Colombo, Edy Portmann

    Partners/ External collaborators (companies): Metropolitan Konferenz Zürich, IVO Innenentwicklung AG, Datalets, cividi, Spatial Transformation Laboratories ETHZ, Swisscom

  • An AI Hierarchy of Needs for Swiss Post Services

    This project looks at postal data (e.g. scans, logins, sensor data, user generated content, etc.) to feed smart systems, which could provide users (e.g. citizens) with personalized and contextual information (e.g. within their city). The data come from different parts within Swiss Post (e.g. PostBus, PostFinance, PostGroup, etc.) as well as in different forms and granularity (e.g. ambiguous sensor data, natural language sources, etc.). The quest of this design-science research is, to design and engineer AI-systems, which offer value to the users (e.g. through providing users/citizens personalized information in the right context). The basic challenges thereby range from collecting data via exploring them through to self-learning systems, which may communicate with users/citizens (e.g. in natural language and with visualization).

    Human-IST Collaborators: Edy Portmann

    External Collaborators: Swiss Post

    Start date: September 2017

  • Computing with Words and Perceptions

    Computing with Words and Perceptions is a relatively new method of computing for computer systems. As words occur in the “natural language” and not in the numerical format, they are imprecise and cannot be processed by traditional systems. Because of this, a lot of relevant information gets lost. In order to change that, the team of the Human-ist examines linguistic computing and tries to create intelligent and smart computer systems. With the help of Computing with Words and Perceptions, new ways of computing should be developed which make the transformation of imprecise information into computer-readable data possible so that they can subsequently be applied in computations. It should be possible to include all necessary information in decision-making processes. It is thus the aim to make today’s processing of information more efficient such that the interaction between humans and computer systems can be optimized.

    Human-IST Collaborators: Edy Portmann, Sara D’Onofrio

    External Collaborators: Swiss Post

    Start date: September 2017

  • Cognitive Urban Planning

    Urbanization of cities has been considered as a prominent driver of development and poverty reduction. This carries out some issues related to the responsibilities of the government, since it involves the mobilization of the community, which turns out that it is necessary to establish all levels of human settlements such as: Small rural communities, towns, small cities, intermediate and metropolis. Today, sustainable development has become the center of urban planning. The urban planning process is a collective exercise that must involve all actors, such as citizens, civil society organizations, the public and private sectors, multilateral organizations, and academia. Furthermore, this planning process must be iterative and in real time.

    This proposal explores the impact of Collective Intelligence (CI), Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Cognitive Systems (SC) as a means of support in decision-making for local governments (Municipalities), to face the challenges proposed by the United Nations in the New Urban Agenda 2017 on the issue of access to housing. In addition, it validates the influence of IC, GIS and SC in the decision-making process in each of the actors in the urban planning process. The exploratory and iterative research approach will be applied, which will allow gathering the criteria of the actors, as well as, building and testing a prototype of collective work software in real time.

    Some results that are expected to be obtained will improve the decision-making process in urban planning, as well as the awareness and participation of citizens in the construction of the city. Specifically, some expected effects on decision-making would be: first, to help citizens select the best homes according to their individual profiles, providing them with real-time advice and recommendations on urban status and housing; second, to support the decision-making process of government institutions (municipalities) towards inclusive urban planning; third, to promote the awareness of the actors on the impact of CI in the urban planning process. Finally, the data collected by the project will be available for research purposes, in areas such as: human-computer interaction, recommendation systems, opinion mining, cognitive cities, pattern recognition, among others. This project will establish a base frame of reference that allows the scientific community and industry to uncover the potential of IC, GIS and SC as a means to tackle the problem of urbanization, a problem declared as a global concern by the United Nations.

     

    Human-IST collaborators: Luis Terán, Edy Portmann

    Partners/ External collaborators (companies): Secretariat of High Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT)

  • Smartifying the Last-mile Delivery through Computational Intelligence

    This research work proposes an improvement of the first-try delivery by studying the behavior of traffic on the streets and customers' presence at home. In contrast to existing solutions, it is proposed working only with data that does not compromise the customers' privacy (i.e., avoiding the use of tracking data) and getting insights about traffic characteristics without the need of deploying a large number of vehicles or expensive sensors. The main goal is to provide a delivery route plan to delivery teams and route planners, which allows finishing the distribution of the parcels in the least amount of time, while being able to effectively deliver the highest amount of them. This will be translated into less resource consumption and a possible increased customer satisfaction.

    The aforementioned can be achieved through the use of computational intelligence (CI), which entails different methods, theories, and concepts aiming at bringing the abilities of computer systems closer to human cognition. CI provides ways of dealing with uncertainty and inaccurate data, that combined with a human-centric approach can allow developing a solution that truly adjusts to the needs of the users, being customers and the delivery companies’ in this case.

    Human-IST collaborators: Jhonny Pincay, Edy Portmann, Luis Terán

    Partners/ External collaborators (companies): Swiss Post, Via Suisse, Secretariat of High Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT)

  • Internet of Postal Things (IoPT)

    In this project, we are experimenting with innovative postal services in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and incidental business models. The basic notion is to make better use of the physical Web Swiss Posts owns and to provide analyzed data of the IoT-sensors to customers or citizens. The project includes technical challenges (i.e. LoRa WAN, new kind of sensors, etc.) as well as business challenges (i.e. new business models as Freemium services, etc.), which should be explored experimentally, as they go hand-in-hand and therefore need to be addressed holistically (i.e. applying action-design-research). It is a design-science research project, where sociotechnical issues as pioneering citizen-centered Smart City services are addressed.

    Human-IST Collaborators: Edy Portmann

    External Collaborators: Swiss Post

    Start date: September 2017