Study-Buddy is a system aiming to provide seamless, context-aware support to students, by monitoring their interactions with reading material and presenting related information in a nearby screen.
The system is composed of a smart reading lamp incorporates a small camera and an embedded computer with WiFi connection. The camera of the reading lamp targets to the student’s reading area (i.e., the area of the desk where the book is placed). Interaction with the Study-Buddy system is initiated when a user indicates a word in the book, by using a black pointer (e.g., pen) and carrying out one of the following gestures: pointing at the word, underlining the word or circling the word.
Whenever the smart reading lamp observes that the reader needs help about a word or a phrase, it scans the area trying to recognize the indicated words, using OCR software. Then, it collects useful information about the recognized words, such as related images and words’ definition Finally, it transmits the aforementioned information to a near the reader computational device (e.g., tablet, smart phone, etc.) which runs LexiMedia.
LexiMedia can be used in the context of learning a foreign language, or while learning one’s mother language as a young student. The software provides:
