themes for graduation projects 2010

Themes and ideas for graduation projects

FCIS 2010

Themes?

Multiple teams work on different, but related, ideas.

Why? So that they don't be alone in unexplored territory. Can help each other, or supervisors can help a

large group of people. Can continue the themes over the years. Can plant the seeds for research groups in FCIS.

My two suggested themes

Arabic NLP, serving research in the Arabic language.

Awraq device, a tablet project that I plan to eventually produce.

Ideas for Arabic NLP?

Previous FCIS projects in NLP, Arabized. Projects oriented towards Applications. Projects oriented towards Research. Projects oriented towards Theory.

Previous NLP projects, Arabized

Translation from English to Arabic (2004) → Make it Arabic to English.

Text Summarization Natural language to UML Natural language to mind maps Document classification/ clustering

Arabic Applications

Semantic AdSense-like platform Understand what the web page is about before

serving advertisements. If semantic is too hard, see making it contextual.

"Animate my story" To encourage children to express themselves in

Arabic (a modern version of Sakhr's 1986 program) Arabic spelling checker or grammar checker.

Research in Arabic NLP

Text mining/ abstraction over text Gain desired information from text, without having

to read all of it. e.g:− Monitoring public opinion from collections of newspaper

articles.− Extracting a list of scientific topics from research papers

“This paper discusses the following plant diseases ....”− Extracting summaries of publications− Extracting references and citations from publications, like

Citeceer or Google scholar.

It would be good to choose a specific area and focus on it, since general text abstraction could be too large a project.


Performing إعراب on (some types of) Arabic sentences. Could use existing wordlists and tree banks or

create our own limited (but well-designed) data sets.

Extracting semantic information from sentence structure... What's the difference between ","ٌد المنطلق ,"قلطنملا ٌديزي

""المنطلق ,"قلطنملا ٌديزيد", ","قلطنملا ٌديزيد ينطلق What's the difference between ًا, جاءني جاءني مسرع

وهو مسرع، جاءني يسرع


From natural language to formal language: A form of natural language-based programming A form of natural language-based knowledge

representation (e.g represent things like expert system rules or prolog facts and rules in natural language).

Arabic NLP all in one page

Translation, A2E.

Arabic text summarization

Arabic → UML

Arabic → Mind maps

Document classification/ clustering

Semantic or contexual AdSense

Animate my story

Spelling or grammar checker

Text mining (newspapers, books, topics in publication content, publication references, other practical areas...)

إعراب انواع من الجمل

Semantic information from sentence structure

NLP based programming or knowledge representation

Awraq project ideas

There are two types of suggested Awraq projects:

Awraq technology: research for creating the device itself.

Awraq applications: useful programs that run on Awraq-like tablet devices.

Technology: Pen-based input

Arabic handwriting recognition

It's an active research topic

Previous projects usually have limitations on how the input is formed

Can understand محمد but not محمد Enforce horizontal lines Can have problems with dots or d َiacr ِicْtic ْs.

Let's remove some limitations ☺

An additional feature: entering formatted text (i.e recognize font size, underlines, alignment...etc)

Advanced idea: recognize font (نسخ، رقعة...)

Required techniques: Pattern recognition, image processing.

Technology: pen-based editing

How does the user edit when he has no cursor, no keyboard, no mouse?

We should invent an interaction model beyond the keyboard/mouse.

The project would be two parts:

1- Creating a user interaction model

2- Implementing it on a pen device Techniques involved: User interaction design

(HCI), pattern recognition.

Technology: New types of applications

Web applications like Google docs are replacing traditional desktop applications.

We want Awraq application to use web technologies (HTML,CSS, JS...), but not miss important features like copy/paste of rich media, drag and drop, saving to files, OLE...etc

So the project is "A runtime environment for hybrid applications that combine desktop and web technologies"

Standards are being developed in many of these areas, and the project could use these standards where possible.

A sketch-recognition language

In 2005, an MIT researcher called Tracy Hammond worked on a language called LADDER, which can be used to describe any sketch to be recognized and edited.

Hammond's publications are here: http://srlweb.cs.tamu.edu/srlng/people/users/thammond?papers=all#Papers

(search for LADDER). She's working on more advanced languages

right now for similar goals


This is an interesting goal; it would enable Awraq developers to easily add sketch recognition to their own applications, without needed to be CS researchers.

And there is a growing interest in the area of sketch recognition (MIT design rationale, TAMU, others...) so there is a lot of literature to read.

The projects is "A language for defining elements for sketch recognition" (needs better title!)

Techniques needed: Compilers, Pattern recognition


From "Enabling Instructors to Develop Sketch Recognition Applications for the Classroom", again by Dr Hammond:

Scenario of the Future:

The class is Computability; the instructor is teaching finite state machines (FSMs) today. Writing on a SmartBoard behind her, she explains how an FSM works by drawing one into a sketch recognition system that she built before class in less than a half-hour.

Technology: Other projects

Improving the Awraq operating system kernel: Improving battery consumption... Improving graphics speed on low processors Working on a managed OS (e.g in JOS (Java) or

Singularity, Cosmos (C#) ) Improving networking features

e.g adding ad-hoc newtworking for instant wireless classrooms.

Techniques: Operating systems, graphics, networking

Applications: Design rationale “Design Rationale" is a research group in MIT,

a lot of their work is related to design with sketches.

One of the important people there is Randell Davis. He's the mind behind a lot of stuff.

They have a lot of publications on their work (hint: we can use them as references :D)

http://rationale.csail.mit.edu/ The MIT D/R group is not the only participant.

Other universities are working on the same goals.

The following slides are about all of them...

http://rationale.csail.mit.edu/

Applications: Design rationale

So, what did they work on? Improving Sketch recognition technology

e.g Separating text from drawings. See paper by Akhshay Bhat (from TAMU)

LADDER

Applying Sketch recognition to many domains... Electronic circuit diagrams UML diagrams Physics (see ASSIST video) …

Multimodal interaction; e.g combining speech with sketching

Applications: Design rationale

This is a general project idea: Pick a certain kind of diagram Make your project "Working with _______

diagrams on a pen-computing device" Add domain-specific features to your application

(e.g generating code from UML, simulating electronic circuits, analyzing equations...)

For more scienceness, if you find a certain technique to be promising, call your project "Using ____ for working with _____ diagrams on a pen-computing device"

Techniques used: Pattern recognition, _______

Applications : SketchCode

Applications : 3D Sketching

http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~shbae/ilovesketch.htm

http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~shbae/ilovesketch.htm

Other applications

Applications that use hardware peripherals: Sound-based keyboard with 2 mics. Improving hand-tracking or eye-tracking with

video camera. Applications that enhance the "school textbook/

copybook" experience A pen-based word processor that organizes

ideas, not just formats text. Advanced copybook (how?)

Awraq: all in two pages

Technology Arabic handwriting recognition Gestures for pen-based editing Hybrid desktop/web applications development

system Sketch-recognition language (like LADDER) Improved OS kernel (Battery consumption,

Graphics speed, Managed OS) Ad-hoc networking

Awraq: all in two pages Applications

Design rationale style: Computer architecture (decoders, adders...) Sketch-based form editor Sketch-based HTML editor

Sketchcode 3D Sketching Related peripherals

Sonic keyboard w/mics Hand tracking

Better tools for writing and education Word processor that organizes ideas Future textbook, copybook

Other ideas: Education

Automatic location and recognition (OCR) of material on whiteboards from lecture videos.

Automatic lecture transcription (speech to text). Can add extra features: e.g Editing the video by editing text. e.g Separating lecturer's voice from student questions

Automatic marking of programming assignments Automatic detection of plagiarism (for code

assignments or in general).

Other ideas: Development tools

Code instrumentation (programs automatically display real-time info about the call stack, value of variables...)

Back-in-time debugging for .net Automated GUI testing (like Selenium for web) Continuations-based web applications VoiceCode (sister of SketchCode) add-in for an

IDE Automated A/B testing for .Net


Wiki-based programming Can develop blogs, message boards,...etc directly

by editing an empty web page from your web browser

Kitty: programming mobile devices from the mobile device itself

Take care of limitations like small screen, hard to type symbols from KB...


Completely visual programming language: Thyrd Subtext and its successor, Coherence Visula Google AppInventor http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~marriott/publications-web.html

Marten (http://andescotia.com/) Sprog (sprog.sf.net) Aluminum (aluminium.sf.net)

Thyrd and Subtext/Coherence seem promising

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~marriott/publications-web.html

http://andescotia.com/


Virtual reality building block programming ...Or other types of VR

visualization (e.g networks)

Other ideas: Search and knowledge

Search engine visualization (e.g Kartoo) Search engine clustering (e.g yippy.com)

Other ideas in one page Education

Recognition of writing on whiteboards Transcription of spoken lectures Automatic marking of code assignments Automatic detection of plagiarism

Development tools

Wiki-based programming Kitty; mobile-hosted mobile programming language Completely visual programming language Virtual reality building-block programming

Search

Search engine visualization Search engine clustering