Human Interface Laboratory

/ Masahide Sugiyama / Professor
/ Michael Cohen / Associate Professor
/ Susantha Herath / Associate Professor
/ Minoru Ueda / Assistant Professor

Using our communication channels (sense organs: ears, mouth, eyes, nose, skin, etc) we can communicate each other, including between human and human, human and machine, and human and every information sources. Because of disability of the above channels in software or hardware sense, sometimes it becomes to be difficult for human to communicate. Research area of Human Interface Laboratory covers enhancement and generation of various human interface channels.

In order to advance the above research on human interface, we adopt the following research principle:

• Theoretical Our target is human interface and our study has possibility to do try-and-error, heuristic, too practical business. Based on our experimental results, and experiences we try to establish the theory, unified insight, generalization and analytical viewpoints.
• Practical Our target is not theory generation for theory. We extract the concept, theory in order to clarify in experimental and quantitative viewpoint.

We organized second workshop IWHIT98 on Nov. 11th, 12th and 13th (International Workshop on Human Interface Technology 1998) which was sponsored by the International Affairs Committee of the University of Aizu. The workshop had 5 sessions (1.Object Location and Tracking in Video Data, 2.Subjective Factors in Handling Images, 3.Visual Interfaces, 4.Visual and Body Perception, 5.Tools for Language Generation; 15 lectures).

We promoted 5 SCCPs for students (``Speech Processing and Multimedia", ``Sign Language Processing System'', ``GAIA -- Planet Management'', ``Computer Music'', ``Aizu Virtual City on InterNet") and 2 Research Projects (``Object Location and Tracking in Video Data'', ``Spatial Media: Sound Spatializiation''). We received 4 commissioned research funds; IPA on ``Development of Japanese Dictation Software'' , HITOCC on ``Study on Computer Security using Speaker Recognition", Fukushima Prefectural Foundation for the advancement of Science and education on ``Environment computer activity project'', Telecommunication Advancement Organization of Japan Fund on ``Sign Language Communication Between Different Languages''.

We exhibited our research activities in the open campus in University Festival (Oct 31st, Nov.1st) and Fukushima Sangyo Fair (Nov. 29th and 30th). We promoted Lab Open House for Freshmen on April 3rd.

On our research activity we presented 6 papers in academic journals and 10 refereed papers in International Conferences.

One of members organized working group on ``Blind and Computer" and about 30 people attended to the working group and received the support from NHK Wakaba Fund.

We have the homepage of Human Interface Lab to open our research and education activities to the world.

http://www.u-aizu.ac.jp/labs/sw-hi/.

Refereed Journal Papers

1. Michael Cohen, Jens Herder, and William L. Martens., Cyberspatial Audio Technology. J. Acous. Soc. Jap., vol.55, No.10, pp.730--731, October 1999.

2. Michael Cohen, Jens Herder, and William L. Martens., Cyberspatial Audio Technology. J. Acous. Soc. Jap. (English), vol.20, No.6, pp.389--395, Nov. 1999.

3. Michael Cohen., Exclude and include for audio sources and sinks: Analogs of mute & solo are deafen & attend. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, vol.9, No.1, pp.84--96, Feb. 2000.

4. Herath, S., Saito, C. and Herath, A., Analysis of Sign Languages: A Step Towards Multi-lingual Machine Translation for Sign Language. Lecture Notes in Computer Science , vol.1755, pp.530--537, 1999.

5. Herath, S. and Herath, A., Algorithm to Determine the Subject in Flexible Word Order Language Based Machine Translations: A Case Study of Sinhalese. Communications of COLIPS , vol.9, No.1, pp.1--16, 1999.

6. Miyatani, Y., Herath, S. and Sugiyama, M., Sign Language Coding and Code-based Pattern Distance. IEICE, No.42, March 2000.

7. Miyatani, Y., Herath, S. and Sugiyama, M., Sign Language Patterns. Johoshuri Gakkai, vol.5, No.9, September 1999.

Refereed Proceeding Papers

1. T. Uchida and M. Sugiyama., Automatic Sampling Frequency Determination for Speech Data. Proc. of ICYCS99, Aug. 1999.

2. K. Watanabe and M. Sugiyama., Automatic Caption Generation for Video Data, -- Time Alignment between Caption and Acoustic Signal --. Proc. of MMSP99, IEEE, Sep. 1999.

3. M. Sugiyama., Fast and Robust Segment Searching Algorithms. Proc. of SPECOM99, Oct. 1999.

4. M. Sugiyama., Segmentation and Searching of Speaker Segments. Proc. of IWHIT99, IWHIT, Oct. 1999.

5. Y. Miyatani, S. Herath and M. Sugiyama., Sign Langauge Coding and Code-based Pattern Distance. Proc. of WIT, pp.109-114, WIT, Mar. 2000.

6. T. Uchida and M. Sugiyama., Evaluation of Sampling Frequency Determination under Noisy Environment. Proc. of IPSJ, pp.1K-04, IPSJ. Sep. 1999.

7. S. Yamaguchi and M. Sugiyama., Development of Internet Sound Effect Toolkit. Proc. of IPSJ, pp.2T-02, IPSJ, Sep. 1999.

8. Y. Miyatani, S. Herath and M. Sugiyama., Derivation of Sign Pattern Differences. Proc. of IPSJ, pp.5N-09, IPSJ, Sep. 1999.

9. C. Sakata and M. Sugiyama., Internet Shiritori using Java. Proc. of IPSJ, pp.5N-10, IPSJ, Sep. 1999.

10. T. Asano, M. Yamashita and M. Sugiyama., Voice Interval Detection using Cepstrum Flux. Proc. of ASJ, pp.121-122, ASJ, Oct. 1999.

11. Michael Cohen., The internet chair. Proc. ICAT: 9th Int. Conf. Artificial Reality and Telexistence, Editor: Susumu Tachi and Michitaka Hirose, pp.29--36, vrsj, Tokyo, Dec. 1999.

    Refereed. A pivot (swivel, rotating) chair is considered as an {\sc i/o} device, an information appliance. As implemented, the main input modality is orientation tracking, which dynamically selects transfer functions used to spatialize audio in a rotation-invariant soundscape. In groupware situations, like teleconferencing or chat spaces, such orientation tracking can also be used to twist iconic representations of a seated user, avatars in a virtual world, enabling social situation awareness via coupled visual displays, fixed virtual source locations, and projection of non-omnidirectional sources.

12. Michael Cohen., A swivel chair as an input device. Proc. CoBuild'99: Second Int. Workshop on Cooperative Buildings - Integrating Information, Organizations, and Architecture, editor: N. Streitz, J. Siegel, V. Hartkopf, and S. Konomi, pp.235--242, Springer-Verlag, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct. 1999.

    Issn 0302-9743. Refereed. Demonstration.

13. K. Naito and S. Herath, Automating Classifying Newspaper Articles into Sections. Proceedings of ADCOM'99, Advanced Computing and Communications Society (ACS), and IEEE Computer Society. Roorkee, India, December 20-22, 1999.

14. Herath, S., Saito, C. and Herath, A., Analysis of Sign Languages: A Step Towards Multi-lingual Machine Translation for Sign Language. Perspectives of System Informatics Proceedings , pp.340-345, PSI'99, Novosibirsk, Russia, July 6--9, 1999.

1. Y. Ariki, T. Matsui and M. Sugiyama., Information Retrieval, Information Processing Society of Japan. 1999

1. M. Yamashita and M. Sugiyama., Evaluation of Computer Security System using Speaker Recognition. Technical Report of Speech, pp.1-8, ASJ/IEICE, June 1999.

2. T. Uchida and M. Sugiyama., Automatic Sampling Frequency Determination for Speech Data. Technical Report of Speech, pp.33-40, ASJ/IEICE, June 1999.

3. M. Sugiyama., Retrieval of Acoustic Information. Technical Report of Speech, pp.57-64, ASJ/IEICE, June 1999.

4. K. Watanabe and M. Sugiyama., Time Alignment between Caption and Acoustic Signal for Automatic Caption Generation. Technical Report of Speech, pp.7-14, ASJ/IEICE, June 1999.

5. N. Fukada, K. Watanabe and M. Sugiyama., Design of Video Caption Markup Language VCML and Development of VCML Player. Technical Report of IPSJ, pp.43-48, IPSJ, Jan. 2000.

1. Masahide Sugiyama., IPA, Development of Speech Dictation System. 1999.

2. Susantha Herath., Aizu University Next Generation Super High Speed Networks, Engineering, Network-based Sign Communication System, yen 1,600,000, 1999.

1. Masahide Sugiyama., Member of Human Interface Committee in IPSJ. 1999.

2. Masahide Sugiyama., Member of Spoken Language Processing in IPSJ, 1999.

3. Masahide Sugiyama., Member of Speech Processing Committee in IEICE, 1999.

4. Masahide Sugiyama., Referee of IEICE and ASJ (Acoustic Society of Japan), 1999.

5. Masahide Sugiyama., Book reviewer of ASJ, 1999.

6. Susantha Herath., IEEE coordinator (1993.4 -), 1999.

7. Susantha Herath., Member of the Review Board for the International Journal of Applied Intelligence (1992.5 ), 1999.

8. Susantha Herath., Member of the Review Board for the International Journal of Information (1999. 5), 1999.

9. Susantha Herath., Organizing Chair of Fifth International Workshop in Human Interface Technology '99 (IWHIT'99), 1999.

10. Susantha Herath., Co-editing the Proceedings of fifth International Workshop in Human Interface Technology '99 (IWHIT'99), 1999.

1. Michael Cohen., Computer Music SCCP. Aizu Dai, 1999.

2. Michael Cohen with Jens Herder., Virtual Reality Audio SCCP. Aizu Dai, 1999.

3. Yumi Miyatani., Measuring Differences between Signs. Univ. of Aizu. 1999, Thesis Advisor: Susantha Herath.

4. Shinpei Uryuu., Computer Based Sign Language Learning System. Univ. of Aizu. 1999, Thesis Advisor: Susantha Herath.

5. Hirokazu Sakuma., Article Searching System by Related Keywords. Univ. of Aizu. 1999, Thesis Advisor: Susantha Herath.