CAS CONNECT 2015

28 This ability could allow robots to determine the priority of their requests and act accordingly. With the disaster scene example, a robot’s human part- ner might be preoccupied with members of the media or emergency management teams. The robot can wait its turn or alert its human partner if there is a high- priority request. Matthew Atkins, a junior in computer engineering, is head of the student team. He heard Crick talking about the proj- ect in his Computer Science II class nearly two years ago and got involved. He hopes to complete the research this summer. “We’re trying to see if the robot will know when it is stressing its user, and in certain instances, act autonomously if it thinks the user is making an incorrect decision,” Atkins says. “As I’ve gotten more deeply involved, I honestly can’t tell sometimes who is the test subject: me or the robot.” Other projects involve collaborations with OSU’s electrical engineering and mechanical and aerospace engineering departments to improve robots’ tool use. Crick says people are much better at iden- tifying what needs to be done, but robots are better at figuring out how to do it once they have been told what to do. It’s this balance of strengths between humans and robots that Crick and other research- ers are trying to get right. “They’re taking direction from us,” Crick says. “But they’re doing it in a much smarter way than our having to be responsible for everything the robot does. It makes our lives a lot easier and our reach a lot farther.” SAFELY STREAMING SMARTPHONES While not everyone may have a robot handy, many Americans do have smart- phones they use daily. Dr. Eric Chan-Tin and his students have been working to develop secure mobile applications for smartphones. One mobile app they are in the end stages of developing will allow smartphone users the ability to safely live-stream video through the app they’ve named VidNow. “One day while talking with [OSU computer science department head] Dr. George, he mentioned it would be nice if he was at an event and could record that event and broadcast it live to his family and friends,” Chan-Tin says. “Right now you have YouTube and Facebook, but you have to record everything first and then upload it.” Chan-Tin looked into apps that did the live-streaming George described. He found a few, but all were using a central server, which he says can result in a lot of security issues. He decided to take his experience with network privacy and security to develop a mobile app that would live-stream video using end-to- end encryption, which prevents a central server from accessing data from either the sender or receiver. Arjun Reddy Lingala, a graduate student of the OSU computer science department, began working with Chan- Tin to learn more about program- ming and ultimately wanted to become involved in a project. “He told me about the basic idea for the video app,” Lingala says. “In December 2013, he gave me a simple task to work on, and after completing most of it over Christmas break, he decided we could move forward in developing the two main parts of the app: recording and receiving.” Over the span of a year and a half, the programming portion of the proj- ect seemed to go by quickly. The longer stages of development involved testing the app, correcting performance issues and further testing. VidNow has recently completed beta testing through OSU’s App Center, a divi- sion of the OSU Technology Development Center that brings together students, faculty, alumni and companies for app development. The App Center will help VidNow with its public release, which will initially be only through the Apple App Store. After its release, Lingala expects his team will work to continue adding new features and updates. The VidNow app wi l l al low users to l ive-stream video through a secure connect ion.