Multimodal Interaction and Related Machine Learning Algorithms Workshop

AMI (Augmented Multiparty Interaction, http://www.amiproject.org) is a newly launched (January 2004) European Integrated Project (IP) funded under Framework FP6 as part of its IST program. AMI targets computer enhanced multi-modal interaction in the context of meetings. The project aims at substantially advancing the state-of-the-art, within important underpinning technologies (such as human-human communication modeling, speech recognition, computer vision, multimedia indexing and retrieval). It will also produce tools for off-line and on-line browsing of multi-modal meeting data, including meeting structure analysis and summarizing functions. The project also makes recorded and annotated multimodal meeting data widely available for the European research community, thereby contributing to the research infrastructure in the field.

PASCAL (Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning, http://www.pascal-network.org) is a newly lauched (December 2003) European Network of Excellence (NoE) as part of its IST program. The NoE brings together experts from basic research areas such as Statistics, Optimisation and Computational Learning and from a number of application areas, with the objective of integrating research agendas and improving the state of the art in all concerned fields.

IM2 (Interactive Multimodal Information Management, http://www.im2.ch) is a Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) aiming at the advancement of research, and the development of prototypes, in the field of man-machine interaction. IM2 is particularly concerned with technologies coordinating natural input modes (such as speech, image, pen, touch, hand gestures, head and/or body movements, and even physiological sensors) with multimedia system outputs, such as speech, sounds, images, 3D graphics and animation. Among other applications, IM2 is also targeting research and development in the context of smart meeting rooms.

M4 (Multi-Modal Meeting Manager, http://www.m4project.org) is an EU IST project launched in March 2002 concerned with the construction of a demonstration system to enable structuring, browsing and querying of an archive of automatically analysed meetings. The archived meetings will have taken place in a room equipped with multimodal sensors.

Given the multiple links between AMI, PASCAL, IM2 and M4, it was decided to organize a join workshop in order to bring together researchers from the different communities around the common theme of advanced machine learning algorithms for processing and structuring multimodal human interaction in meetings.