Development of a speech recognition system for Spanish broadcast news

This paper reports on the development process of a speech recognition system for Spanish broadcast news within the MESH FP6 project. The system uses the SONIC recognizer developed at the Center for Spoken Language Research (CSLR), University of Colorado. Acoustic and language models were trained using Hub4 broadcast news data. Experiments and evaluation results are reported

Measuring stress and cognitive load effects on the perceived quality of a multimodal dialogue system

In this paper we present the results of a pilot study investigating the impact of stress and cognitive load on the perceived interaction quality of a multimodal dialogue system for crisis management. Four test subjects interacted with the system in four differently configured trials aiming to induce low/high levels of stress and cognitive load. To measure the level of stress and cognitive load physiological sensors and subjective ratings were collected. After each trial the subjects filled in an evaluation questionnaire regarding the system interaction quality. In the end we conducted an in-depth interview with each subject. The trials were recorded with a webcam to facilitate the behaviour analysis. Results showed that both factors have an influence on the way subjects perceived the interaction quality, whereas the cognitive load seems to have a higher impact. Further quantitative experiments are needed in order to validate the results and quantify the weight of each factor. \u

How the agent’s gender influence users’ evaluation of a QA system

In this paper we present the results of a pilot study investigating the effects of agents’ gender-ambiguous vs. gender-marked look on the perceived interaction quality of a multimodal question answering system. Eight test subjects interacted with three system agents, each having a feminine, masculine or gender-ambiguous look. The subjects were told each agent was representing a differently configured system. In fact, they were interacting with the same system. In the end, the subjects filled in an evaluation questionnaire and participated in an in-depth qualitative interview. The results showed that the user evaluation seemed to be influenced by the agent’s gender look: the system represented by the feminine agent achieved on average the highest evaluation scores. On the other hand, the system represented by the gender-ambiguous agent was systematically lower rated. This outcome might be relevant for an appropriate agent look, especially since many designers tend to develop gender-ambiguous characters for interactive interfaces to match various users’ preferences. However, additional empirical evidence is needed in the future to confirm our findings

How humans behave and evaluate a social robot in real-environment settings

Behavioral analysis has proven to be an important method to study human-robot interaction in real-life environments providing highly relevant insights for developing new theoretical and practical models of appropriate social robot design. In this paper we describe our approach to study human-robot interaction by combining human behavioral analysis with robot evaluation results. The approach is exemplified by a case study performed with a social robot receptionist in real-life settings. Our preliminary results are encouraging, as many behavior categories could be successfully related to certain evaluation patterns. With our analysis we hope to add a useful contribution to social-robotic design concerning user modeling issues and evaluation predictions

Smart City Technologies: Design and Evaluation of An Intelligent Driving Assistant for Smart Parking

Smart cities technologies are gradually changing our urban landscape thanks to the proliferation of billions of smart devices permanently connected through the internet. Among technologies with highest impact on citizen’s quality of life are intelligent transportation systems and in particular, smart parking applications. In this paper, we present a study evaluation the design of a smart parking assistant developed in our lab. The system is implemented as mobile app with an integrated GUI adapted for Android tablets. The app extends common park guidance information systems (PGI) offering suggestions based on parking fee or proximity to destination. Two novel features – beyond the state of the art of current available systems – are added: the use of natural language and the ability to react in real-time to changes in parking occupancy. If the number of parking lots drops to critical level, the application redirects the driver to another parking place. Furthermore, the app includes GPS and Google maps interfacing modules which enable the application to detect the driver location and calculate the nearest car park distance. A group of five experts with background in interface design and natural language processing evaluated the prototype using Nielsen’s set of heuristics in a think-loud approach. Results and implications for further interaction design are extensively discussed

Smart Collaborative Platform for eLearning with Application in Spatial Enabled Society

AbstractSpatially Enabled Society enables new educational opportunities and perspectives, by introducing integrative and multi-disciplinary approach in different scientific domains interconnected on a real time information platform. The paradigm proposed here is to learn at work place by doing and by collaborating at level of technology, information and the level of involved personal. As case study, we propose to develop an educational platform in urban planning field, are aiming to provide a real time data base, a network based on interchanges generated by different scientific stakeholders. Creating such a platform to build a bridge between academia and the private sector as well as interfaces between different disciplines and specialists and every citizen is still a challenge