This paper describes the development of a set of three video games designed to reduce the high drop-off rates associated with learning to play the piano/keyboard by gamifying rote tasks that require monotonous practice. By defining our own understanding of what musicianship is and creating a custom framework for assessment through the use of existing curriculum, we have chosen specific areas which require the most rote learning and are critical to developing motor skills and to building an understanding of music; these include learning and practicing scales, keeping in time with tempo and the basics of hand coordination and fingering styles. Existing solutions that attempt to resolve the issue of high drop off rates observed with beginner instrument learners use elements of gamification in order to enrich their learning experiences and also help increase motivation. These approaches do work but in most cases they offer short term solutions; a key issue is retaining users over long periods of time and ensuring that they practice consistently and regularly. We developed solutions which offer a way for learners to practice in an engaging and entertaining way, with the intention to reduce the drop-off rates and lower the barrier for entry to learning piano/keyboard.

This paper describes the development of a set of video games designed to reduce the high drop-off rates associated with learning to play the keyboard by gamifying rote tasks that require monotonous practice. By defining our own understanding of what musicianship is and creating a custom framework for assessment through the use of existing curriculums and learning applications, we have chosen specific areas which require the most rote learning, are critical to developing motor skills and to building an understanding of music; these include learning and practicing musical scales, keeping in time with tempo and the basics of hand coordination and fingering styles. We developed solutions which offer a new way for learners to practice in an engaging and entertaining way with the aim to reduce the drop-off rates and lower the barrier for entry to learning keyboard. Developing games requires an iterative process of development, testing, isolating key issues and solving them through further development. Therefore, through a pilot study (using observations, screen recordings and semi-structured interviews as data collection methods), we have observed that whilst this novel method of learning and practicing using video games is positively accepted by learners and teachers alike, the games themselves and the process of validation requires refinement in order to truly gauge each game relating to engagement, motivation and educational benefit. This paper describes the findings of this pilot study regarding the improvements and changes of each developed game as well how to improve future user studies.

TheWorld Wide Web has become a key tool for information sharing. Engineers and scientists are finding that the web is especially suited to publishing the graphical, multi-layered information that is typical of their work. Web pages are easier to distribute than hardcopy. Web movies have become more accessible, in many offices, than videos. Good VRML viewing software, bundled with most new PCs, has sufllcient power to support many engineering needs.In addition to publishing information science and engineering has an important tradition of peer and customer review. Reports, drawings and graphs are typically printed, distributed, reviewed, marked up, and returned to the author. Adding review comments to paper is easy. When, however, the information is in electronic form, this ease of review goes away. It's hard to write on videos. It's even harder to write comments on animated 3D models. These feedback limitations reduce the value of the information overall.Fortunately, the web can also be a useful tool for collecting peer and customer review information. When properly formed, web reports, movies, and 3D animations can be readily linked to review notes. This paper describes three multimedia feedback systems that Sandia National Laboratories has developed to tap that potential. Each system allows people to make context-sensitive comments about specific web content and electronically ties the comments back to the web content being referenced. The fust system ties comments to specific web pages, the second system ties the comments to specific ftames of digital movies, and the third ties the comments to specific times and viewpoints within 3D animations. In addition to the technologies, this paper describes how they are being used to support intelligent machine systems design at Sandia.

The RoboHound TM Project was a three-year, multiphase project at Sandia National Laboratories to build and refine a working prototype trace explosive detection system as a tool for a commercial robot. The RoboHound system was envisioned to be a tool for emergency responders to test suspicious items (i.e., packages or vehicles) for explosives while maintaining a safe distance. The project investigated combining Sandia's expertise in trace explosives detection with a wheeled robotic platform that could be programmed to interrogate suspicious items remotely for the presence of explosives. All of the RoboHound field tests were successful, especially with regards to the ability to collect and detect trace samples of RDX. The project has gone from remote sampling with human intervention to a fully automatic system that requires no human intervention until the robot returns from a sortie. A proposal is being made for additional work leading towards commercialization.3