Microsoft demos farm data, obesity-measuring technology
June 23, 2015 |07:12 AM
Lucas Joppa, a Microsoft researcher, discusses the company’s farm data project, part of a commitment Microsoft has made to President Barack Obama’s climate data initiative. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)Microsoft last week showed off a farm data dashboard and a program using computer-generated images to calculate waist size and body mass index that may some day make it easier for people to use Agriculture Department data, and to help health professionals to do their work.
The demonstrations of the dozen projects in development took place at the Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center Tech Fair in the company’s Washington office.
The project with the greatest potential for agriculture is the Farm Data Dashboard, designed to provide a simple interface for an instant overview of the vast array of complex datasets that the Agriculture Department has on farms and crops.
Lucas Joppa, a Microsoft researcher, said in an interview that the farm data project is part of formal commitment Microsoft has made to President Barack Obama’s climate data initiative to open up important data sets and empower the public to address and cope with climate change.
The Farm Data Dashboard, Joppa said, “will put the data together in a common look and feel and computation structure” so that it can be accessed and combined more easily than using the differing data sets in the various divisions of USDA.
USDA’s data range from crop patterns by state and price data to energy use and nutrition. Joppa said the idea behind the Farm Data Dashboard is to alleviate the “pain points” that people now find in trying to combine USDA data to make decisions.
Microsoft is committed to making the Farm Data Dashboard publicly available before Obama leaves office in January 2017, said Joppa, a Wisconsin-born expert in wildlife ecology and conservation biology.
The dasbboard “is built on Azure ML, Microsoft’s cloud-based machine learning service and is one of several ways that could capabilities are opening up USDA data to external developers as part of an effort to build applications and services that will strengthen and streamline the nation’s food systems,” Microsoft said in a booklet distributed at the tech fair.
Microsoft researchers Dan Goldstein, left, and Jake Hofman discuss software that would deduce waist size and Body Mass Index based on computer-generated images. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)Another Microsoft project on display could help address the increasing incidence of obesity by measuring waist size and body mass index (BMI) without the physical measurement and touching that is currently necessary.
The system is based on a library of thousands of computer-generated body images, spanning both sexes and a range of weights, heights and waist circumferences, plus a methodology to guide and interpret people’s selection processes, Microsoft notes.
“The waist is the best predictor of obesity-related disease,” Dan Goldstein, one of the researchers involved in the project, noted in an interview.
Computer imaging, he added, can be used with people who are uncomfortable being measured. Microsoft notes that the system could also be used to encourage participation and improve online apparel shopping.
In its booklet, Microsoft said computing devices are generating more data than ever before and that its researchers are looking to answer questions such as:
- “How do we use that data to derive meaning and insight, helping us to address societal issues?
- “How do we harness this amazing computer power to improve the human condition and what types of public policy issues does this shift introduce?
- “How can we augment human capacity to ‘do more’ with these technologies and what types of issues do these advances present?”
Microsoft’s researchers and scientists are doing the basic research, which means the application of these technologies will have to be developed by others.
“Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” said Fred Humphries, Microsoft vice president for U.S government affairs.
“But we can’t do that on our own. That’s why we are dedicated to working with others to raise awareness of future technologies and encourage public policies that support innovation.”
