Grants

The current World Wide Web (WWW) is, by its function, the syntactic web where structure of the content has been presented while the content itself is inaccessible to computers. The next generation of the Web (the Semantic Web) aims to alleviate such problem and provide specific solutions targeted the concrete problems. The Web resources will be much easier and more readily accessible by both human and computers with the added semantic information in a machine-understandable and machine-processable fashion. It will have much higher impact on eWork and eCommerce as the current version of the web already had. Still, there is a long way to go transfer the semantic web from an academic adventure into a technology provided by software industry. Supporting this transition process of Ontology technology from Academia to Industry is the main and major goal of Knowledge Web. This main goal naturally translates into three main objectives given the nature of such a transformation. (1) Industry requires immediate support in tacking up this complex and new technology. Languages and interfaces need to be standardized to reduce the effort and provide scalability to solutions. Methods and use cases need to be provided to convince and to provide guidelines for how to work with this technology. (2) Important support to industry is provided by developing high-class education in the area of semantic web, web services, and Ontologies. (3) Research on Ontologies and the semantic web have not yet reached its goals. New areas such as the combination of semantic web with web services realizing intelligent web services require serious new research efforts. Spoken in a nutshell, it is the mission of Knowledge Web to strengthen the European software industry in one of the most important areas of current computer technology: Semantic web enabled eWork and eCommerce. Naturally, this includes education and research efforts to ensure the durability of impact text.

Funded under: FP6-IST

The main scope of the proposed framework is the development of innovative analysis techniques, export of semantic information and management of multimedia content in general and multimedia documents in particular. The proposed system, called Visual Asset, will be constituted by a number of distinguishable subsystems that will undertake the different stages of processing, analysis, storage and access to content provided by multimedia documents (texts, images, video, audio and 3D representations) and are summarized in the following:

• Image and video processing subsystem aiming at automatic export of low level characteristics (color, texture, form, movement, speed, etc) and export of characteristic parts of objects (object segmentation) (e.g. segmentation of persons in a video sequence). These results will be used in the system integrating visual and textual information via the use of ontologies, but also in the effective search and retrieval system, based on visual information.
• Integration of visual and textual information subsystem. Object of this subsystem will be representation of knowledge with use of ontologies, analysis of multimedia content based on visual and textual and production of metadata with a common way of representation, regarding both textual and visual information.
• Modeling and logical analysis of documents subsystem, aiming at automatic categorization and creation of effective search and retrieval applications, providing advanced functionalities in organization and management of big document volumes. The subsystem will integrate visual and textual information results and will use the notion of context in a document in order to fulfill the tasks of automatic categorization, logical analysis (table of contents, automatic recognition of chapters, titles, notes, reports in images, video, etc) and efficient search and retrieval.

Funded under: SP6 (National)

HUMAINE aims to lay the foundations for European development of systems that can register, model and/or influence human emotional and emotion-related states and processes - emotion-oriented systems. Such systems may be central to future interfaces, but their conceptual underpinnings are not sufficiently advanced to be sure of their real potential or the best way to develop them. One of the reasons is that relevant knowledge is dispersed across many disciplines. It identifies six thematic areas that cut across traditional groupings and offer a framework for an appropriate division of labour - theory of emotion; signal/sign interfaces; the structure of emotionally coloured interactions; emotion in cognition and action; emotion in communication and persuasion; and usability of emotion-oriented systems.

Funded by FP6-IST 

aceMedia built a system to extract and exploit meaning inherent to the content in order to automate annotation and to add functionality that makes it easier for all users to create, communicate, find, consume and re-use content.Long term market viability of multimedia services requires significant improvements to the tools, functionality, and systems to support target users. aceMedia seeks to overcome the barriers to market success which include user difficulties in finding desired content, limitations in the tools available to manage personal and purchased content, and high costs to commercial content owners for multimedia content processing and distribution, by creation of means to generate semantic-based, context and user aware content, able to adapt itself to users` preferences and environments. aceMedia will build a system to extract and exploit meaning inherent to the content in order to automate annotation and to add functionality that makes it easier for all users to create, communicate, find, consume and re-use content. aceMedia targets knowledge discovery and embedded self-adaptability to enable content to be self organising, self annotating, self associating; more readily searched (faster, more relevant results); and adaptable to user requirements (self reformatting). aceMedia introduces the novel concept of the Autonomous Content Entity (ACE), which has three layers: content, its associated metadata, and an intelligence layer consisting of distributed functions that enable the content to instantiate itself according to its context (e.g. network, user terminal, user preferences). The ACE may be created by a commercial content provider, to enable personalised self-announcement and automatic content collections, or may be created in a personal content system in order to make summaries of personal content, or automatically create personal albums of linked content. The ACE concept will be verified by two user focused application prototypes, enabled for both home network and mobile communication environments. This enables the aceMedia partners to evaluate the technical feasibility and user acceptance of the ACE concept, with a view to market exploitation after the end of the project.

Funded under: FP6-IST

The main objective of the ERMIS Project is the development of a prototype system for human computer interaction that can interpret its users' attitude or emotional state, e.g. activation/interest, boredom, and anger, in terms of their speech and/or their facial gestures and expressions. The adopted technologies include linguistic and paralinguistic speech analysis and robust speech recognition, facial expression analysis, interpretation of the user's emotional state using hybrid, neurofussy, techniques, while being in accordance with the MPEG-4 standard. Specific attention is given to the evaluation of the system's ability to improve effectiveness, user friendliness and user satisfaction, while examining and resolving related ethical issues. Real life applications, where users interact with machines, and in particular with call/ information centres and next generation PC interfaces, have been selected to test the performance of the ERMIS system The ERMIS project has conducted a systematic analysis of speech and facial input signals, in separate, as well as in common; the aim was to extract parameters and features which can provide human computer interaction (HCI) systems with the ability to recognize the basic emotional state of their users and interact with them in a more natural and user friendly way. Testbed applications have been selected for testing and evaluating the ERMIS system performance, referring to everyday interaction of users with their PCs and with service or information providing call centers, with successful developments prospecting a large market size.The ERMIS system is able to rely on prior knowledge related to the emotional analysis of speech and/or facial expressions, and to accommodate for the different expressive styles of humans. The continuity of emotion space, the uncertainty involved in the feature estimation process and the required ability of the system to use prior knowledge, while being also capable of adapting its behaviour to its users' characteristics, is handled by using intelligent hybrid, neurofuzzy, approaches.

Funded under: IST-2000

The overall objective of SPERO project is to provide data concerning the field of special educational needs in order to identify the meaning of exclusion and to introduce policies and strategies for social inclusion. SPERO will collect and process material of training teachers mainly in special education. This will offer valuable information in the area of training. Samples will be gathered in several working posts where professionals meet current needs by not using "tools" based of ICT. Data will be collected by the "clever" questionnaire, which will be used to analyse factors, and variables that may lead to unemployment and social exclusion. Emerging issues will lead to proposed actions that may be adopted in order to prevent the risk of unemployment.

Funded under: LEONARDO

The overall objective of FAETHON project is to develop an integrated information system that offers enhanced search and retrieval capabilities to users of digital audiovisual (a/v) archives. This novel system will exploit the advances in handling a/v content and related metadata, as introduced by MPEG-4 and worked out by MPEG-7, to offer advanced access services characterized by the tri-fold "semantic phrasing of the request (query)", "unified handling" and "personalized response". From a technical point of view, the proposed system will play the role of an intermediate access server residing between the end users and multiple heterogeneous audiovisual archives organized according to new MPEG standards. Various types of interfacing modules will be designed/ implemented to support smooth communication of the intermediate server to the a/v archives. The major final product will be an integrated software system consisting of the two, semantic unification and personalization subsystems, together with two types of interfaces. Namely, those between the system and the individual a/v archives and those between the system and the end-users.

Funded under: FP5-IST

The main objective of ORESTEIA IST project is to define, design and validate the internal architecture and the collaborative functionality of artefacts with embedded hybrid intelligence. The targeted artefacts will possess encapsulated local decision capabilities, as well as on-line adaptability of their behavior, while being able to communicate to each other producing new more complex functionalities. Micro-power sources will enable artefacts to "live" in an autonomous mode. The proposal focuses on the creation of artefacts responsible for interaction with humans, possessing modularity, hybrid architecture composed of subsymbolic and symbolic components which continuously interact with each other, adaptable functionality and ability to communicate with each other and with information sites based on common structure of the information they possess, extract and exchange. Of particular importance to the project is the design of collections of artefacts providing health status analysis and hazard avoidance. ORESTEIA also aims at investigating enabling technologies for DC in the form of energy harvesting and low power wireless communications.

Funded under: FP5-IST

The overall objective of this project is to set up a framework to build interactive-multimedia networks over the Internet and WWW that would act as Electronic Roads for cultural and historical exploration in five Euro-Med countries with particular emphasis on the cross-national links of these Electronic Roads. This general objective can be broken down to three more specific objectives as follows: to study and develop an appropriate methodological framework for the development of multimedia systems for cultural exploration across national and regional boundaries, to technologically build particular prototypes of these regional Electronic Roads, to deploy these systems in various studies of the social and educational impact of the Information Society in the Euro-Med region.

Funded under: FP4-INCO

This EU-funded project aims to establish a pilot European multimedia network and organisation with the purpose of motivating encouraging school pupils to take up a career in technology and related businesses and industries, and to assist with the learning of languages within the context of learning about technological subjects in school at both primary and secondary level. The network will take the structural form of a group of European universities with skills in the development and use of multimedia materials and experience in teacher training working together with teachers and pupils in schools to provide a unified range of user configurable, multi-lingual, multimedia courses on topics in advanced technology for primary and secondary schools. Course materials will be developed in at least 6 topics with all materials available in English, German, and Greek. The project will be of 2 years duration starting in early 1998. ISDN links will be established between the 3 participating universities and from each of the universities to its group of schools (14 schools in total). Telecommunications service providers will establish these connections and be involved as partners in the project to assist with technical developments as well as with commercial aspects for exploitation of results. The project will form the pilot study for the creation of a self-funding European educational multimedia network and organisation for the teaching and learning of advanced technology which has the capability of assisting language teaching. In the 2 years following the project (2000-2002) it is planned to provide access to MODULATES materials for over 1,000 schools throughout the EU.

Funded under:MM Task Force