Sharing Human-Generated Observations by Integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web

Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C’s Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers’ observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is soun

Design of a Controlled Language for Critical Infrastructures Protection

We describe a project for the construction of controlled language for critical infrastructures protection (CIP). This project originates from the need to coordinate and categorize the communications on CIP at the European level. These communications can be physically represented by official documents, reports on incidents, informal communications and plain e-mail. We explore the application of traditional library science tools for the construction of controlled languages in order to achieve our goal. Our starting point is an analogous work done during the sixties in the field of nuclear science known as the Euratom Thesaurus.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Spoken dialogue systems: architectures and applications

171 p.Technology and technological devices have become habitual and omnipresent. Humans need to learn tocommunicate with all kind of devices. Until recently humans needed to learn how the devices expressthemselves to communicate with them. But in recent times the tendency has become to makecommunication with these devices in more intuitive ways. The ideal way to communicate with deviceswould be the natural way of communication between humans, the speech. Humans have long beeninvestigating and designing systems that use this type of communication, giving rise to the so-calledSpoken Dialogue Systems.In this context, the primary goal of the thesis is to show how these systems can be implemented.Additionally, the thesis serves as a review of the state-of-the-art regarding architectures and toolkits.Finally, the thesis is intended to serve future system developers as a guide for their construction. For that

The European Language Resources and Technologies Forum: Shaping the Future of the Multilingual Digital Europe

Proceedings of the 1st FLaReNet Forum on the European Language Resources and Technologies, held in Vienna, at the Austrian Academy of Science, on 12-13 February 2009

Language beyond the language system:Dorsal visuospatial pathways support processing of demonstratives and spatial language during naturalistic fast fMRI

Spatial demonstratives are powerful linguistic tools used to establish joint attention. Identifying the meaning of semantically underspecified expressions like “this one” hinges on the integration of linguistic and visual cues, attentional orienting and pragmatic inference. This synergy between language and extralinguistic cognition is pivotal to language comprehension in general, but especially prominent in demonstratives. In this study, we aimed to elucidate which neural architectures enable this intertwining between language and extralinguistic cognition using a naturalistic fMRI paradigm. In our experiment, 28 participants listened to a specially crafted dialogical narrative with a controlled number of spatial demonstratives. A fast multiband-EPI acquisition sequence (TR = 388 m s) combined with finite impulse response (FIR) modelling of the hemodynamic response was used to capture signal changes at word-level resolution. We found that spatial demonstratives bilaterally engage a network of parietal areas, including the supramarginal gyrus, the angular gyrus, and precuneus, implicated in information integration and visuospatial processing. Moreover, demonstratives recruit frontal regions, including the right FEF, implicated in attentional orienting and reference frames shifts. Finally, using multivariate similarity analyses, we provide evidence for a general involvement of the dorsal (“where”) stream in the processing of spatial expressions, as opposed to ventral pathways encoding object semantics. Overall, our results suggest that language processing relies on a distributed architecture, recruiting neural resources for perception, attention, and extra-linguistic aspects of cognition in a dynamic and context-dependent fashion

Understanding blind Users' Web Accessibility and Usability problems.

Our motivation for this research is the belief that blind users cannot participate effectively in routine Web-based activities due to the lack of Web accessibility and usability for non-visual interaction. We take a cognitive, user-centered, task-oriented approach to develop an understanding of accessibility and usability problems that blind users face in Web interactions. This understanding is critically needed to determine accessibility and usability requirements for non-visual Web interaction. We employ verbal protocol analysis for an in-depth examination of difficulties participants face in completing an online assessment through a course management system. We analyze the problems that hinder accessibility and usability and explain the nature of these problems in terms of design principles. Our study contributes an effective method for qualitative evaluation of Web accessibility and usability. Our findings will guide future research to develop more accessible and usable Web applications for blind users