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Juxtopia LLC Receives $168K Maryland Industrial Partnerships Research Project Award
BALTIMORE, Feb 05, 2009 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ --
Juxtopia(R) LLC, a biomedical and information technology company developing innovative human performance products and services, has received a $168K research project award from the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program, company officials announce today.
The funding supports research with Dr. Carol Espy-Wilson, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering department and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, to jointly develop advanced speech recognition software that works in noisy environments for Juxtopia's augmented reality goggles.
Juxtopia's Wearable Assistance and Situational Awareness (WASA) Goggles and WASA Service offer on-demand visual and audio access to key information in an optical, see-through display from almost any location. Situation-specific information may be provided to the goggles from a remote server wirelessly via Internet, cellular service or satellite.
"If you are performing inspections on an auto assembly line, you might need a checklist of what to inspect and a picture of what a specific part is supposed to look like," says Dr. Jayfus Doswell, president and CEO of Juxtopia(R). "The WASA Goggles can display information so you can actually look at the real-world part and a digital image, 3D animation, text, and or video through the same display."
Army combat medics may use the WASA Goggles to assist them in performing medical procedures in a training environment or on the battlefield; a novice skier could reference lessons while practicing; healthcare providers could pull up medical records on-the-fly.
The WASA Goggles are activated by speech, using speech recognition software to send requests to a remote server. But that speech can be difficult to detect in noisy environments such as a battlefield. That is where the MIPS project comes in.
Espy-Wilson has developed algorithms that filter out noise from a particular sound. Through the MIPS project, she is adapting that algorithm for the WASA Goggles.
"Our goal is to make our technology, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio for an incoming speech signal to recognize it more effectively, run fast and in real-time for Juxtopia's goggles," says Espy-Wilson.
Founded in 2001 by Doswell, Juxtopia(R) is a member of the Emerging Technology Center, the City of Baltimore's technology business incubator.
The company received $100,000 phase 1 and $500,000 phase 2 Small Business Technology Transfer grants through the National Science Foundation in 2004 to develop applications for its goggles for automotive manufacturing workers. It also secured a $50,000 Fort Detrick Technology Transfer Initiative grant through the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) to develop a method for pulling up electronic medical records on a heads-up display, and $56,000 out of a $321,410 grant from TEDCO's Maryland Research and Applied Sciences Consortium (MRASC) to conduct WASA Goggle-related research through which Bowie State University, Coppin State University, Morgan State University, and Sojourner Douglass College each will focus on specific innovations to advance the art of mobile augmented reality goggles.
About the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) Program (www.mips.umd.edu)
The Maryland Industrial Partnerships Program, an initiative of the A. James Clark School of Engineering's Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech), brings university innovation to the commercial sector by supporting university-based research projects to help Maryland companies develop technology-based products.
About Juxtopia (http://www.juxtopia.com)
Juxtopia LLC is a biomedical and information technology company developing innovative human performance products and services. Juxtopia's innovative products and services integrate into a person's normal routine and enhance cognitive and physical capabilities to continually improve performance.
SOURCE Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute
http://www.juxtopia.com
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