Remember the Name

EDesign 100 Section 14

Engineering Corps

5 May 2014

Astin Toms (aat5192@psu.edu), Harrison Chen

(hhc5033@psu.edu), Olivia Caldwell (ovc5041@psu.edu)

Executive summary or Abstract:

Engineering Corps proposed project is an

aid to help remember names. The

targeted customers are business people who

need to know so many names on a daily

basis. The product is not only confined to business people, because every day there are

people forgetting names. This product is for those people who want to be able to

properly address individuals in their world. To be able to achieve success with names,

Engineering Corps is using different wavelengths for different people so specific

wavelengths can be recognized as a name.

Introduction:

Being in the business world people are always expected to remember names,

but remembering names can be challenging at times. People can forget names under

stress, when too much is going on, or just in general. This poses a problem because

people are more likely to be viewed as professional if they can remember names. Some

people wish that there was a way to help you remember names without anyone else

knowing. Engineering Corps has come up with a proposed product that will be able to

aid people with names. The proposed product is a small ear piece, about the size of a

hearing aid, that when someone talks to you the ear piece picks up the persons

personal wavelengths and saves them to an app through the server. Once the

wavelength is saved to the app, the owner can go through the app and add more

information. The information can be anything from what company the person works for

to what college they attended. Then the next time the customer encounters a person

whose wavelength and data is stored the device, “Remember the Name” will discretely

tell the name.

Use Case:

Our vision is to make a product that can aid people with names so they can

properly address others.

Currently, to remember names a person has to meet and hear the name a few

times until it goes to memory, and even sometimes after that a person will forget names

for all different reasons.

Engineering Corps are designing a device that when someone is wearing it in

their ear it will pick up a person’s voice wavelength and send the wave length to an app

that they can edit later and add the name/company/whatever they desire. Then the next

time you encounter that person the device will pick up the wavelength and discretely

whisper in the user’s ear anything pre-programmed about that specific wavelength in

the app.

Research:

AT&T: As a company American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (AT&T)

has been around since Alexander Graham Bell created the telephone in 1876. Since

the beginning AT&T has been setting milestones in the technology world. For example

in 1947 AT&T developed the idea of cellular telephony, even though the technology did

not exists yet (http://www.corp.att.com/history/milestones.html). More recently AT&T

has become one of the largest networks available. AT&T serves 110 million customers

in more than 225 countries around the world (http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?

pid=5711).

Cellular Technology: It is the technology used in a wireless phone. It enables

mobile communication because of a two-way radio system between the wireless phone

and the wireless network.(https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/Cellular%20Technology.pdf)

1G, 2G, 3G and 4G were designed and used and developed by the carriers to meet

their customer needs. For 1G, it can only use in basic voice calls, but 3G makes the

phone always connect with an internet.

(

http://www.moxa.com/newsletter/connection/2007/08/Beginner's_Guide_to_Cellular_Te

chnology.htm)

The Cloud: More and more today the cloud is being talked about and used, but

what is the cloud? The cloud is a way of networking tons of computers together by using

the internet. It is more simply put that the cloud is really the internet. The cloud gives the

ability to run programs or applications over a network with many connected computers

at the same time. The advantage to the cloud is that shared resources are at a

maximum effectiveness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing).

Rationale for Use Case: A use case is used to help see the vision, how to get

there, and the current state. It is meant as a guide to help clearly define the problem

that is trying to be solved and ways to try and achieve that. We followed a model to

design our use case, and catered it toward our idea.

Rationale for Survey: Engineering Corps created a survey to help get an idea of

what type of product normal customers would be willing to buy to help them remember

names. Some of the ideas of questions that were asked were if individuals forgot

names, if they would like a device to help remember names, if they felt more

professional if they remembered names, and a price range for how much they would be

willing to spend if a product like this existed.

Concept Generation:

From research there common methods used to identify a person.

Holistic Face Method:

A method where a machine uses the whole face as an input, the machine then

compares the details of a person’s face. This method may be affected if a person

makes facial expression. This machine has an average of 71% recognition success.

This method was used in some government and office buildings to authorize a person

for access into the building.

Feature-based face Method:

Feature-based Method is a more advanced way than the Holistic face method.

The method uses only part of the human’s face (examples are eye, nose or mouth

region) as an input. It needs much less information to process than the holistic method

to identify the person. Disadvantages are the characteristics of a person are not stable

because over a long period of time features change.

Voice:

Voice recognition is used on a daily basis by many people since everyone has a

distinct voice. The most common way to recognize a person’s sound wave is by a

Hidden Markov model, and for security, the Hidden Markov model can’t do it inversely to

get the original speech. The disadvantage of voice is as a person get older, his/her

vocal system can be change, and it could cause a significant change in their frequency

and wavelength of their voice.

Gait:

This is a new way develop by the psychologist to identify a person. It uses how

the people walk as its input to figure out who the person is.

Body Characteristic:

This type of method uses the characteristic of a person such as body weight, this

method is not accurate in long period of time due to change of the person.

As seen in the chart above the voice is the best way to identify a person.

Concept selection.

Engineering Corps had a few ideas to help aid people with remembering names.

The ideas ranged from wearing a necklace or brooch to use face recognition for names

to what we ended up deciding to go with, which was a small ear piece that uses voice

wavelengths. We decided to go with that idea since the product needed to be something

that was discreet but also something that was effective, and that many people would

use. To get a better idea a survey was drawn up to get some feedback from possible

consumers to see what kind of device would be the most productive, and at how much

they were willing to spend to remember names.

Systems Diagram.

This systems diagram shows the connection between the device, an app, and the cloud.

It shows that each one is connected to the other, and that you need all three for the

device to operate properly and efficiently.

Design Analysis:

Remember the Name will use Bluetooth for the bandwidth, this is because the

device will need constant connection to the internet. The range of ten meters would be

acceptable because for the most part the device and the app will not be far from each

other since most people do not leave their phones. IEEE 802.15.1 will be the

wavelength the device is using. The cost of Remember the Name will be $99.99. This

includes the price of the device along with the free app.

Our target audience will be for people in the workforce or people who have

trouble remembering names. There will be marketing to get the device’s name and

function out to the public. Marketing will help to get the word out, so more people will

know about the product and be able to go and buy it. Marketing will be achieved by ads,

word of mouth, and social media.

Some data management related issues that could occur is if the device is picking

up more than one wavelength at a time, it will be able to record all of the wavelengths,

and also record how long the wavelength was being used, (how long the person was

talking for.) Then the owner of the device would be able to go into the app later and edit

the information. The person who talked the most would be the person who had the

wavelength recorded the most. This would allow for the owner to be talking with multiple

new people at the same time and still be able to use the device properly. The device

records and remembers people’s wavelength. This could interfere with people that are

under government protection, because if their voice wavelengths are being recorded

they may no longer be safe from what they are being protected from. People are very

particular as to what is recorded of them or what kind of pictures are taken of them. The

only privacy issue that could be a concern is that not everyone would want to have their

voice wavelengths recorded and remembered.

3D Model:

This is our design for Remember the Name as designed on SolidWorks. Several

pictures were included to allow different views of the product. A CAD drawing was also

included to show the dimensions of the product could be given.

This is how the app would be designed. You would be able to turn the device on

and off with the app, in addition to being able to control the volume. Data that you could

include in the contact information about the person are what company they work for,

what their position they hold, last time you spoke, and any other information that you

feel is necessary.

Prototype:

Remember the Name prototype is shown in pictures below. It has two main parts,

one that sits inside of the ear and the other part that is located outside of the ear. The

part inside of the ear has a speaker that will tell the owner the name of the wavelength

that it is picking up. The part on the outside of the ear will be able to pick up the

wavelength and transport that data directly to the app.

This is a picture of the wavelength receiver of the device.

This is the picture of the speaker part of the device

Overall view of the prototype

Concept of Operations:

Scenario 1: If someone is working in a factory (or another loud environment) while using

the product there can be many outside noises that could potentially confuse the device.

However, Remember the Name has a circuit that contains both low frequency and high

frequency signal filter that only 300 to 1000 Hz signal can pass through, so the saved

data will not include noise from the surroundings. Helping keep the app just for voices

and names.

Scenario 2: In a group setting, if someone is talking to more than one new person the

device will be picking up more than one wavelength. The device will send all the new

wavelengths to the app where the time and duration spent talking to each person will be

recorded and then when the owner is going back in to enter names it will be easier to

remember who is who since they will know roughly how much each person talked.

Scenario 3: If in ten years the owner comes across someone who is saved into the

device, due to the aging of that person, the soft tissues of his/her larynx will also change

over time, and it will cause the change in frequency and wavelength of the voice.

Unfortunately at this time Engineering Corps has no other solution for this issue besides

re-entering the person’s data because they are essentially a “new person” with the

changed voice. Although using the app to organize the characteristic of the people’s

speech is a possible way to solve it. (How people organize their language, how many

times do they use a specific word in the speech, etc.) But it will increase the privacy

issue of the Remember the name.

Conclusions:

Remember the Name is a device designed to help individuals remember names.

It is meant to be an aid to remembering names and should not be fully depended upon.

The main purpose is to help those who have difficulty remembering names, and to

provide some reassurance in a group setting that the owner is properly addressing an

individual with the correct name. The device will be reasonably priced for what the

device can accomplish. While the main audience is people in the work force many

others can use the device, like the older generations who have trouble remembering.

Remember the Name is the first device of its kind on the market and will be easily

available to customers.

References:

http://www.corp.att.com/history/milestones.html

http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?pid=5711

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

http://www.ncvs.org/ncvs/tutorials/voiceprod/tutorial/changes.html

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=628714

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/2924763_People_Recognition_by_Mobile_Robots/file/9c960517001c439084.pdf