Personal digital memory album

• Main Author: Huang, Wei Xuan
• Other Authors: Tan Ah Hwee
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66814
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Technology has become an integral part of most people’s daily life in the last two decades. It has become increasingly convenient to be able to take photos on the go as most mobile devices comes with a built-in camera. The photos taken can be stored online and there are many such photo storing and sharing applications in the market today, such as Facebook, Instagram and Flickr. People enjoy looking through photos of the past because it brings back fond memories associated with the photos. Technology can be used to help the elderly with aging. As Singapore faces an aging population along with the rest of the world, it is therefore important to help the elderly group age gracefully. An application that allows for photo storage and retrieval can provide comfort to elderly as they get to relive memories of the past. Research has shown that nostalgia can counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety, and as such, a photo sharing application would aid in elderly’s cognitive and psychological health. Most of the existing photo storing and sharing applications in the market currently organizes and displays the photos in a chronological order based on the date that the photos were uploaded. The searching of photos would be based on keywords and few applications actually support semantic searches. This project improves a prototype web application named MyLife which allows the elderly to store and retrieve memories in the form of photographs with context. MyLife simulates the autobiographic memory in humans using the Autobiographical Memory-Adaptive Resonance Theory network (AM-ART) network. AM-ART network allows MyLife to handle noisy or imperfect queries, which most existing applications cannot handle. It also supports memory wandering, which is the retrieval of a set of seemingly random, but contextually related photos. The photos would be displayed in the form of a slideshow. Music would accompany the display of the photos and the music would be determined by the mood that is depicted in the photos. Transition effects between photos and animation while displaying each photo will also enhance the users’ experience when using MyLife.