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Buffington Presents Talk at ACM Conference

rossbuffington.jpgOn Nov. 13, Belmont senior Ross Buffington will present a talk on “Game Implementation for Increasing Mental Engagement of Security Professionals” at the 2009 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Mid-Southeast Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In addition, Dr. William Hooper (Math/Computer Science) will be giving a talk on assembly language programming with the Sony PlayStation 3.
Buffington, a computer science major, spent this past summer conducting research at the University of Houston, Texas that was funded by the National Science Foundation. He worked in the University of Houston’s Computational Physiology Laboratory with a number of master’s and post-doctorate students. This experience allowed Ross to further his understanding and competence in developing applications for the iPhone. Prior to the Houston research experience, Ross had spent the entire school year independently learning how to write software for the device.
Through his research he created “The Sky is Falling,” a computer based, two-dimensional, game which overlays on top of the live video feed of a security camera. The purpose of the game is to increase the cognitive engagement of a security guard when charged with the task of monitoring video feeds for hours on end. A secondary purpose of the application was to promote physical activity of the security guard. This was accomplished by incorporating the iPhone as a game controller-device, allowing a user to wirelessly interact with their computer using the iPhone.

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