Projects / Programmes
Advanced methods of interaction in telecommunication
January 1, 2009
- December 31, 2013
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 2.08.00 |
Engineering sciences and technologies |
Telecommunications |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| T180 |
Technological sciences |
Telecommunication engineering |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 2.02 |
Engineering and Technology |
Electrical engineering, Electronic engineering, Information engineering |
communication, telecommunication services, multimodality, adaptive user interfaces, language technologies, automatic speech recognition and synthesis, language resources, multimedia, system design, formal methods
Researchers (18)
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 research conducted in the field of speech preprocessing, acoustic modelling of speech and language modelling have contributed to the science in development of technologies for group of inflected languages, to which also Slovenian language belongs. It was shown that to achieve similar recognition performance with existing technology as it can be achieved for the English language, new approaches are required. The new algorithms developed within the research program in the field of speech preprocessing and large vocabulary speech recognition enabled significant improvements in speech recognition accuracy. The new algorithms have been developed for Slovenian language, but can be also used for other inflected languages. From this point of view the research work performed has an important impact in this research field. The work on the reference speech corpus of Slovene GOS was published in a reputable international journal. This way it was confirmed as a model of good practice in speech corpora compilation and represents an important standard for further work in this field. A paper on the concept of context represents an overview and critical analysis of the comprehensions of this concept in linguistic and discourse theories in the international scope. It represents an excellent starting point for further work on the role of the context in human-to-human, machine mediated human-to-human or human-to-machine communication, especially from the point of view of comprehension processes in speech and discourse. The results in the area of TLA+ will help it become a practical formalism applicable to a wide range of systems, when the computer-aided verification tools for it are better developed. The results in the area of the use of formal methods for performance evaluation demonstrate that the latter can be a good alternative to the classical methods at least for smaller systems. Due to its functionalities and friendly user interface the integrated development environment SpinRCP will ease the researchers and Spin users the process of editing Promela models, running the simulation and the model checking itself.
Significance for the country
New development directions in the field of telecommunications services give language technologies in the context of supportive living environments and intelligent environments a new dimension, as they represent one of the key communication modalities. Given that elements of such an environment will in the future in some way influence the living environment of almost every individual, the possibility of using the mother tongue has an important role in preserving the national identity. It is important to assure the possibility of using Slovenian language in such communication environments. Research conducted in the area of speech technologies resulted in development of new algorithms for speech preprocessing, acoustic and language modelling and large vocabulary speech recognition systems. Here, significant improvement in the performance of the Slovenian continuous speech recognition system represents an important contribution in this area for development of Slovenia. An international publication on the GOS corpus contributed significantly to the recognition of the Slovene science in the field of language technologies and corpus linguistics in the world. A paper on the question of context in linguistic and discourse theories represents new and very current knowledge on the issue which is rarely considered in the Slovene linguistics and connected fields of research. The topic of context is rarely discussed and poorly represented not merely by domestic authors, but also by translated publications. Our research in the area of application of formal methods for performance evaluation of systems helps Slovenian research community to follow the latest trends in the field of formal verification. At the same time, the professional staff, who will be able to use this knowledge for the transfer to the Slovenian industry, is being educated.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2009,
2010,
2011,
2012,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2009,
2010,
2011,
2012,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
