Microsoft Research will invest more than $6 million in academic collaboration. This hefty budget is for research grants to the university set. It has specifically said it will fund projects in the following areas: Cell phones for healthcare services in rural areas; biomedical computing for the genome project, particularly projects that help with data usage and analysis; intelligent Web 3.0 – sometimes called the semantic Web – projects that develop context-aware models of information access; multi-core computing, particularly projects that show how operating systems can scale; Sustainable and energy efficient computing; and the most fun area of all – human-robot interaction.
Microsoft Research workers showed off some of their projects, including several that find new uses for mobile phones, on Monday at a summit in Redmond, Washington. Fone+, a product that lets users connect their mobile phones to a TV, keyboard and mouse.
Another application, MPTrain, combines a heart-rate sensor with a music-tempo analyzer to let runners use music players in their mobile phones to set their workouts. The phone will prompt you, with the help of music, to speed up or slow down according to your workout goals.
Another application is intended to help people with sleep apnea – who repeatedly stop breathing as they sleep. A small sensor placed on the person’s toe would communicate with a mobile phone over Bluetooth, to monitor heart rate and level of oxygen in the user’s blood.
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Microsoft researchers are also working on a bunch of location-based tools. The group is attempting to build a model that predicts where and when people would get out of their cars. They are also working on a tool, called SlamXR, that lets users share information about their favorite workouts, including routing the map and showing heart rates, distance, elevation changes. Read More.
