Projects / Programmes
Advanced methods of interaction in telecommunication
January 1, 2004
- December 31, 2008
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 2.08.00 |
Engineering sciences and technologies |
Telecommunications |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| T180 |
Technological sciences |
Telecommunication engineering |
communication, telecommunication services, multimodality, adaptive user interfaces, language technologies, automatic speech recognition and synthesis, language resources, multimedia, system design, formal methods
Researchers (23)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The proposed research programme encompasses basic and applied research in the areas of telecommunications systems and services that include multimodal interaction using speech communication and multimedia content. One of the goals is to follow the development of telecommunication technology, new standards and services that will be introduced in the field of telecommunication systems.
In the field of speech technologies the objectives of the research programme are development of new algorithms for automatic continuous and spontaneous Slovenian large vocabulary speech recognition and basic research in the field of speech-to-speech translation for Slovenian language. The research will focus on development of new techniques for robust speech processing and acoustic modelling with statistical methods. In the field of multilingual speech recognition the emphasis will be on cross-lingual speech recognition. In language modelling new approaches of inflectional language modelling using sub-word models will be developed.
Besides the language technology also other interaction modalities (image, keyboard, gesture, writing ...) will be considered, especially design of new concepts and techniques for integral user interfaces that will enable simultaneous use of different modalities.
In the era of information technology the gravity of trends is towards minimization and technological excellence of devices. In this context the work will be oriented toward next generation mobile devices and within this minimization of the communication modules with the increase of the integration level. For achieving that goal new innovative approaches will be examined and implemented.
The activities in the field of formal methods include theoretical, development, and applicative research in the area of telecommunications system design and correctness ensurance. These systems consist of concurrently executing and continuously communication components. Contemporary systems have additional characteristics, such as dynamic creation and destruction of components, mobility of components and data. In order to be able to develop quality systems and services, formal design and verification methods are needed. The goal of the research group is development of new methods for formal and semi-formal specification and verification of systems with these characteristics, development and implementation of new, efficient algorithms for automatic verification, and development of application instructions for as well as the application of existing methods and tools in the design of such systems.
Significance for science
The continuous and spontaneous speech recognition task is gaining interest of researchers in last few years. The problem complexity, specific characteristics of languages and speakers, demand for large language resources, and interdisciplinary nature of the problem makes this research field extraordinarily challenging. At the same time a large part of these specific characteristics is still not well researched, but they represent the main hindrance to achieve high speech recognition accuracy. This is particularly true for the group of highly inflected languages, where also Slovenian language belongs. In international research community a considerable lack of research work can be noticed for those languages, which don’t belong to the group of “major” world languages (e.g.: English, French, Spanish, German, Mandarin,...). Therefore the research work performed has an important impact in this research field. In recent years, intensified research effort has been made on how to employ formal methods in software design as successfully as in hardware design. Whereas the use of standardised formal or semiformal design languages by communication software producers is quite established, this is not at all the case with the use of formal verification, as the science still searches the ways to enable its use for such complex systems. The scientists all over the world also continuously upgrade and develop new formal and semiformal languages, as well as the methods and tools based on them, in order to be able to specify and verify contemporary systems. Our research efforts contributed to the development of the formal methods able to cope with the concepts of contemporary systems, and of the methods not only appropriate for academic system examples.
Significance for the country
The research area of developing telecommunication services and multimodal user interfaces is of immense importance from the viewpoint of reducing the digital divide. State-of-the-art user interfaces can with support of multimodal solutions substantially increase the availability of services for unfamiliar users. From the aspect of inclusion of Slovenia in European surrounding an important role plays the multilingual speech technology research work. The development of this research field is very important from the point of view to enforce and maintain the role of Slovenian language in the digital era. During the research programme lifetime several successful transfer of research results through the applied and industrial projects for Slovenian and international telecommunication industry was carried out. By evaluating the outcomes of transfer of research results to the industry, it must be taken into account that the developed products are usually state-of-the-art systems with high added value and as such also very interesting from the perspective of increasing the export possibilities of Slovenian industry. A significant contribution can be also seen in the social and society area. State-of-the-art algorithms and methods, applied in high quality automatic speech synthesis and recognition systems, can be very useful and helpful for people with special needs – particularly for blind and deaf people. In such a way the quality of their life from the aspect of interaction with their surrounding (and society) will increase. Likewise the usage of new algorithms and methods will improve the quality and usability of state-of-the-art interactive telecommunication services. Development of language resources, needed for automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis, SST, and dialog systems, enables the development of commercial voice-driven applications also for Slovenian language. We can expect that voice-driven applications will be in the future part of many technical products (e.g., mobile phones, automobiles, the whole field of IT, household machines etc.). It is crucial for future development of the Slovenian language that voice-driven applications support the Slovenian language. Only this way we can preserve the full functionality of the language – otherwise, in a long-term, the existence of the language can be endangered. The techniques of speech technologies are not the same for all languages, but we need to consider the peculiarities of each language. For the Slovenian as part of Slavic languages, which are all highly inflectional, technical solutions integrated to speech technologies are rather different than for languages that are most commonly used in speech technologies, especially Germanic, Romanic and East-Asia languages. Therefore the work performed within the research programme is of great importance also from this point of view. In the global market, Slovenian producers of communication technology will have to compete with producers which already use formal methods in all key development phases, not only for specification, and spend a lot of money on further research on their use, as they have established that this brings them advantage on the market. Our work helped the Slovenian industry to start to introduce formal methods into the development process.
Most important scientific results
Final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Final report,
complete report on dLib.si
