Interactive Search and Space Food: Scientific Questions

1
Interactive Search and Space Food Scientific
Questions

• Icosystem Corporation
• January 2006

2
Overview

• How can we use Interactive Search to develop a
  tool capable of generating and inventing food
  items (vs. searching a pre-existing catalog)?
• What are the necessary components of a food
  grammar? How can we compactly describe food and
  food processing?
• What subspace of food (texture, taste) might be
  the best place to start?
• How can the software learn to recognize good
  or interesting food items?

3
Interactive Search

• What would an interactive search tool for food
  design/generation be like?
• What interface elements should we keep from the
  current tool? Add? Remove?
• What controls/options are important for
  astronauts?
• For NASA nutritionists?

4
Interactive Search-Describing Food

• How do you compactly describe food?
• Ingredients
• Combinations
• Transformations
• Can we take advantage of the current tool to
  learn more about relationships between
  ingredients and/or cooking methods and results?

5
Entire Network

• Weight 6 and above

6
Replicating a known food item
?
?
?
?
?
?
7
Inventing new food items
?
?
?
8
Learning

• User fatigue is a major issue in interactive
  search
• Can expect at most 4-5 rounds of user feedback
• The software will need to be able to recognize
  promising foods without presenting each potential
  combination to the user
• Individual astronauts will have different
  preferences. Software should adapt to different
  users.
• Includes implicit preferences as in the current
  demo user enters chicken, but really means
  chicken entrée

9
Discussion - Food in Space

• Psychological challenges
• Domain-specific constraints
• Technologies
• Which issues and challenges are most pressing?
• Which problems can be addressed in the near term?
• Which problems are we ultimately aiming to solve?
• Other application areas (Antarctica)