University of Jaen (UJA) telecommunications engineers have developed a method to automatically detect and identify musical notes in an audio file and generate sheet music. The system can identify notes from different instruments, musicians, types of music, or recording studio conditions. “We propose an automatic system to detect and transcribe musical notes for one-instrument musical signals which, unlike other methods, is capable of adapting to the music scene,” says UJA’s Julio Jose Carabias. “Automatic music transcription has many practical applications for musicological analysis and is of enormous assistance, for example, in recovering musical content, separating audio sources, and codifying or converting audio files.” The researchers’ method converts WAV music files into MIDI files, which makes it possible to visualize the sheet music and listen to the result. “Another advantage of this method is that it does not require prior training with a musical database,” Carabias says.
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Researchers at the Freie Universitat Berlin’s Artificial Intelligence Group have developed eyeDriver, software that enables users to steer a car with their eyes. The driver wears a helmet that features two cameras. One camera is pointed at the driver’s eyes and captures their movements, and the other camera points forward. The data is transmitted in regular intervals to an onboard laptop computer, where the eyeDriver software converts the data into control signals for the steering wheel. The software can calculate the position of the pupil in the eye, as well as the position in the scene that the user is looking at. The software has two modes. In “free ride” mode, the driver’s gaze direction determines the desired position of the steering wheel. In “routing” mode, the software steers autonomously unless an intersection or fork in the road appears. In that case, the car stops and the driver must select the desired route.
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Spammers are paying people in countries such as India, Bangladesh, and China to pass Web security tests known as CAPTCHAS, which ask Web users to type in a string of semi-distorted characters to prove they are humans and not spam-generating robots, according to Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn. He says thousands of people in developing countries, primarily in Asia, are solving these puzzles for pay. The completed CAPTCHAS help spammers open new online accounts to send junk emails. However, Internet company executives say the threat of spammers paying people to decode CAPTCHAS is not a major concern. They note that Web sites use several tools to verify accounts and maintain security. Some sites may send confirmation codes as text messages, which then must be entered into a separate verification page before new email accounts are activated. “Our goal is to make mass account creation less attractive to spammers, and the fact that spammers have to pay people to solve CAPTCHAS proves that the tool is working,” says Google’s Macduff Hughes.
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Robert Harle, assistant director of research at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, says the closed philosophy of devices such as the iPhone discourages the kind of tinkering that encouraged generations of computer scientists in the past. “People can use their iPhone…but they don’t want to delve into it, they don’t want to understand the depths behind it,” Harle says. “And I have a sneaking suspicion this is partly because we’ve got to the stage now with computing, computer science, [information technology], whatever you like, that it’s now such a black box, such a complex thing, that you can’t really fiddle in the same way as people used to.” Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory averages about 80 new students a year, down from 150 several years ago. In response, the school has launched a new Web site to promote the study of computer science, and is participating in open days and regional student conferences. Students also are not getting enough computer science education in grade school, which is bringing down university computer science enrollment numbers, and in turn, giving kids the wrong idea of what computer science is, Harle says.
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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute have developed Minput, a proof-of-concept miniature input device that provides mouse control and optical tracking for handheld devices. Minput features a 1.5-inch liquid-crystal display taken from a wristwatch originally developed to allow users to watch TV or movies, and two optical sensors. The researchers say Minput can be operated anywhere, including the surface of a table, on a user’s leg, or on the palm of a user’s hand. Users can manipulate Minput and control different programs via gestures such as flicking and twisting. For example, turning it like a knob would adjust the volume and sliding it left and right would change songs. Another modality functions like a virtual window, and users can slide Minput over photographs, text documents, and Web pages to interact with them. Minput also offers cursor control, which functions like a mouse for playing simple games.
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