News
School of Computing Graduate Students and Faculty Produce an App using Machine Learning and Gaming Techniques
December 13, 2021
For over a decade now, the Applied Computing Institute and its predecessor, the Mobile Apps and Services Lab has played an active role of The School of Computing. One of the most notable roles ACI plays for our students is through forming industry partnerships who then sponsor projects for our students to complete as part of their culminating experience. One such project, the YouBrush app, has gone through many iterations and has now come to fruition.
YouBrush has been worked on by many individuals over the course of its creation such as Dr. Jonathan Engelsma, Dr. Rahat Rafiq, and students Griffin Going and Esteban Jaramillo. This team’s goal was to create an application that would help the general public brush their teeth more often and with better quality. The way they have gone about achieving this is by developing the app with both machine learning techniques as well as conventional gaming techniques.
The team was faced with a problem when trying to determine how to construct the software behind the app. How can an app on a phone or other device detect if someone is brushing their teeth or not? The team was able to find cutting edge research that uses audio captured by the smart phone with machine learning. The way this app has been designed to work is to listen to the user while they brush their teeth and provide guidance based on the audio captured by the smart phone. The team was able to train the program to detect only the sound of brushing teeth and to ignore all other bathroom noises.
Additionally, in order to preserve user privacy, all of the processes the app goes through to function properly happens on the user’s private device. The audio is then deleted the second the machine is able to detect whether the sound of brushing teeth is present or not. This is different from, say, an Alexa device where all of the information is delivered over the Internet to another computer for processing.
There are also some game building techniques included in this application as well. It is important for individuals to use this app consistently in order to see results in their oral hygiene. What has been implemented at this time is the function of a streak. Users who use the application when brushing their teeth at least two times per day will keep their streak alive. Once a day is missed, their streak is gone, and they must start over. There are other types of gaming models being toyed with right now and may be included in the application in the future.
Students Esteban and Griffin both note that working on the YouBrush application has been rewarding and challenging. It has forced them to combine the skills they have gained in varying classes to solve a real-world problem. Both note that working on this project has made huge improvements to their skill sets and their resumes.
YouBrush is an app that is still being researched and developed by this team at Grand Valley State University. It's first iteration can now be found in the app store.