In 2010 we had the idea to have multiple graduation projects with common themes. The themes selected for that year were "Arabic NLP" and "Pen computing". This presentation outlined the two themes and suggested several project ideas for them (and some GP ideas not related to the two themes),

1. Themes and ideas for graduation
projects
FCIS 2010

2. 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.

3. My two suggested themes

Arabic NLP, serving research in the Arabic
language.

Awraq device, a tablet project that I plan to
eventually produce.

4. Ideas for Arabic NLP?

Previous FCIS projects in NLP, Arabized.

Projects oriented towards Applications.

Projects oriented towards Research.

Projects oriented towards Theory.

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Research in Arabic NLP

Performing ‫ إعراب‬on (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 ","‫ملا ٌديزيد ٌ المنطلق‬
‫""المنطلق ملا ٌديزيد", "ملا ٌديزيد ينطلق‬
 ً
What's the difference between ‫جاءني مسرعا, جاءني‬
‫وهو مسرع، جاءني يسرع‬

9. Research in Arabic NLP

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).

10. 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

12. 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.

13. 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 ‫ محمد‬but not ‫محمد‬

Enforce horizontal lines

Can have problems with dots or dَiacrِicْticْs.

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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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

17. A sketch-recognition language

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

18. A sketch-recognition language

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.

19. 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

20. 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...

21. 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

22. 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, _______

23. Applications : SketchCode

24. Applications : SketchCode

25. Applications : SketchCode

26. Applications : 3D Sketching
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~shbae/ilovesketch.htm

27. 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?)

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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).

31. 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

32. Other ideas: Development tools

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...

33. Other ideas: Development tools

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

34. Other ideas: Development tools

Virtual reality building block programming

...Or other types of VR
visualization (e.g networks)

35. Other ideas: Search and knowledge

Search engine visualization (e.g Kartoo)

Search engine clustering (e.g yippy.com)

36. 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