Professor helps create space-age guide dogs
By: Lexie Kite
Issue date: 1/26/05 Section: Features
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Professor Kulyukin's interests lie in the study of assistive technology, the technology that benefits the lives of people with disabilities.
"I'm interested in helping those with disabilities for two reasons," he said. "First, my brother has a hearing disability, so this affects me personally. Second, 90 percent of research in science and engineering is devoted to military means; it is technology that essentially takes away human life. I want to develop technologies that benefit and enhance life."
Professor Kulyukin was born and raised in Russia and later came to do his schooling under a professor he had long-admired at the University of Chicago. He has been at USU for three years now.
"I not only came to USU because they made me the best offer but also because USU has an excellent Center for Persons with Disabilities," he said.
Kulyukin works jointly as a computer science researcher and for the Center for Persons with Disabilities. He said he had an especially embarrassing moment here at the Center for Persons with Disabilities involving a robot and a speech recognition system.
"We figured we could speak to the robot in English, and using the voice recognition system the robot would interpret the commands and obey them. I quickly realized that just wasn't possible," he said.
He said a blind man found the glitch in the system when he cleared his throat and the robot misunderstood the sound to mean the man wanted to go to the bathroom.
"Every time the man cleared his throat, the robot would immediately change directions and guide him into the bathroom," he said.
"It was an especially embarrassing moment in my research," he added.
Professor Kulyukin said his current research project is in assisted navigation in dynamic and complex environments.
"Simply speaking, we are trying to develop a robot for use as a mobile grocery cart used for the blind in supermarkets," he said. "The robot would meet the blind person at the door and, by the push of a button, would lead the person to different areas of the store."
