Face Controller - Microsoft Imagine Cup World Final presentation

Editor's Notes

1. “Computer for everyone” it was a slogan for Microsoft in 2008. But here comes a question. Are PC’s really available for everyone now? In our opinion they still are not.
2. On the beginning I would like you to meet one important person, our friend Michał, and show you why we started this project.
3. Let me ask the question once again, “Are the PC’s really available for Michał now?” But is it only Michał that is affected by this? About 40 million people with spinal cord injury live in the World. And this huge number grows every single day.
4. There are some others who lost their hands in an accident, some were born without hands. These people definitely can’t use computer properly, using hands like we do. Everything becomes difficult and challenging. Education, having fun, contact with people. Fortunately we have a solution.
5. Ladies and gentleman our team is called Power of Vision and we are here to present our solution which will help Michał and others affected with disabilities. We are: Sylwia, Tomek, Norbert, Piotr and Daniel. Our team consists of two academic clubs, Software Developers and Human-Computer Interaction. We spend a lot of time together and we decided to combine our skills and interests.
6. Together we have created a new way to operate a computer. Face Controller gives you the power to change your head into remote controller for your computer. We have got a powerful alternative to a mouse and keyboard. In the next couple of minutes I will show how many things you can do without use of your hands.
7. Our solution is not only a single application. It’s a platform for launching apps with special user interface and navigation model designed for easily control by head and face. Thanks to it Michał can: contact with friends by facebook, send emails, control light in his room by remote. He can also run Controller application and use all computer features and all desktop apps like:calling every mobile phone by skype, do shopping online, playing games, write a text documents by using speech recognition or virtual keyboard. Everything just by using his head.
8. Michał can also do everything with voice commands including control desktop applications, mouse actions and also light in the room. He can also calibrate and configure everything by the settings panel. Our platform is fully customizable and can adapt to different people. Now Daniel will show you how it works.
9. By that time you have probably asked yourselves how a disabled person can start using Face Controller? All you have to do is sit in front of the device and start using it. Like Daniel Now.
10. As you can see in a hardware layer, we are using Kinect sensor. Our core application is built in WPF desktop technology so it works on Windows 7 and 8. Our app is fully integrated with Microsoft Azure cloud.
11. Let me be very clear about our mission – making computers available for everyone. In order to do that a disabled person need to have Microsoft Kinect and license for Face Controller. For a total cost of about 400 dollars.
12. Let me be very clear about our mission – making computers available for everyone. In order to do that a disabled person need to have Microsoft Kinect and license for Face Controller. For a total cost of about 400 dollars.
13. Our mission will be successful if Face Controller is available to disabled persons around the world. In order to do so we are basing our business model on building up a distribution through foundations and companies that work with disabled people. I want to give a real example how it works: we establish a partnership with “Foundation for active rehabilitation” that allow us to reach a couple thousands disabled people and preform direct sales. Altix, a company that is a leading distributor for hardware and software for the disabled, is waiting for a release version of Face Controller. This will guarantee us indirect sales and good market penetration. As you can see this is a business model that scales up easily worldwide.
14. That is our business model but we have a dream. A dream that one day Face Controller will be a part of an operating system.
15. Now you know what is Face Controller, but let’s see what might be in the future. Someone who can’t move his hands will be able to control the light at home, regulate his bed. For us that are the basic things, but for this people it’s not possible.
16. Now Michał is using Face Controller, he can studying, work, communicate easily. And he is independent person. We wanted help Michał, now we know that we can help more people in the world. Thank you for your attention.