CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

An Analysis of Using Expert Systems and Intelligent Agents for the Virtual Library Project at the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Carderock Division

The Virtual Library Project1 at the Naval Surface Warfare Center/Carderock Division (NSWC/CD) is being developed to facilitate the incorporation and use of library documents via the Internet. These documents typically relate to the design and manufacture of ships for the U.S. Navy Fleet. As such, the libraries will store documents that contain not only text but also images, graphs and design configurations. Because of the dynamic nature of digital documents, particularly those related to design, rapid and effective cataloging of these documents becomes challenging. We conducted a research study to analyze the use of expert systems and intelligent agents to support the function of cataloging digital documents. This chapter provides an overview of past research in the use of expert systems and intelligent agents for cataloging digital documents and discusses our recommendations based on NSWC/CD’s requirements

Multimedia Chinese Web Search Engines: A Survey

The objective of this paper is to explore the state of multimedia search functionality on major general and dedicated Web search engines in Chinese language. The authors studied: a) how many Chinese Web search engines presently make use of multimedia searching, and b) the type of multimedia search functionality available. Specifically, the following were examined: a) multimedia features - features allowing multimedia search; and b) extent of personalization - the extent to which a search engine Web site allows users to control multimedia search. Overall, Chinese Web search engines offer limited multimedia searching functionality. The significance of the study is based on two factors: a) little research has been conducted on Chinese Web search engines, and b) the instrument used in the study and the results obtained by this research could help users, Web designers, and Web search engine developers. By large, general Web search engines support more multimedia features than specialized one

Multi-layer Architecture For Storing Visual Data Based on WCF and Microsoft SQL Server Database

In this paper we present a novel architecture for storing visual data. Effective storing, browsing and searching collections of images is one of the most important challenges of computer science. The design of architecture for storing such data requires a set of tools and frameworks such as SQL database management systems and service-oriented frameworks. The proposed solution is based on a multi-layer architecture, which allows to replace any component without recompilation of other components. The approach contains five components, i.e. Model, Base Engine, Concrete Engine, CBIR service and Presentation. They were based on two well-known design patterns: Dependency Injection and Inverse of Control. For experimental purposes we implemented the SURF local interest point detector as a feature extractor and $K$-means clustering as indexer. The presented architecture is intended for content-based retrieval systems simulation purposes as well as for real-world CBIR tasks.Comment: Accepted for the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC, June 14-18, 2015, Zakopane, Polan

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Just an Update on PMING Distance for Web-based Semantic Similarity in Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining

One of the main problems that emerges in the classic approach to semantics is the difficulty in acquisition and maintenance of ontologies and semantic annotations. On the other hand, the Internet explosion and the massive diffusion of mobile smart devices lead to the creation of a worldwide system, which information is daily checked and fueled by the contribution of millions of users who interacts in a collaborative way. Search engines, continually exploring the Web, are a natural source of information on which to base a modern approach to semantic annotation. A promising idea is that it is possible to generalize the semantic similarity, under the assumption that semantically similar terms behave similarly, and define collaborative proximity measures based on the indexing information returned by search engines. The PMING Distance is a proximity measure used in data mining and information retrieval, which collaborative information express the degree of relationship between two terms, using only the number of documents returned as result for a query on a search engine. In this work, the PMINIG Distance is updated, providing a novel formal algebraic definition, which corrects previous works. The novel point of view underlines the features of the PMING to be a locally normalized linear combination of the Pointwise Mutual Information and Normalized Google Distance. The analyzed measure dynamically reflects the collaborative change made on the web resources

Agents for Distributed Multimedia Information Management

This paper discusses the role of agents in a distributed multimedia information system (DMIS) engineered according to the principles of open hypermedia. It is based on the new generation of Microcosm, an open hypermedia system developed by the Multimedia Research Group at the University of Southampton. Microcosm provides a framework for supporting the three major roles of agents within open information systems: resource discovery, information integrity and navigation assistance. We present Microcosm and its agents, and discuss our current research in applying agent technology in this framework

Towards a Framework for Developing Mobile Agents for Managing Distributed Information Resources

Distributed information management tools allow users to author, disseminate, discover and manage information within large-scale networked environments, such as the Internet. Agent technology provides the flexibility and scalability necessary to develop such distributed information management applications. We present a layered organisation that is shared by the specific applications that we build. Within this organisation we describe an architecture where mobile agents can move across distributed environments, integrate with local resources and other mobile agents, and communicate their results back to the user