| 1. |
- Al-Douri, Yamur K.
(författare)
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Information assurance for maintenance of railway track
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Railway traffic is steadily increasing, having a negative impact on maintenance and resulting in decreased track availability, comfort, and safety. Swedish railway track maintenance mostly focuses on the actual track condition via a nationwide condition-based maintenance (CBM) strategy. For maintenance to be conducted in an appropriate way, data on the actual track condition must be accurate; furthermore, those data need to be converted into accurate information for maintenance decisions. An information assurance (IA) framework has the potential to deal with the system risks from a technical perspective. The framework is a guideline that can be implemented within CBM to understand both condition monitoring data behaviour and the information processing used to reach maintenance decisions.This research investigates ways of an information assurance (IA) framework can be implemented in the following CBM steps: data collecting, data processing and making maintenance decisions on Swedish railway. The framework can be used to understand data behaviour, information processing and the communication between information layers for decisions at organisation, infrastructure and data/information levels. The research uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate critical information data, parameters, and problems and to suggest which areas need improvement. Quantitative analysis of the Swedish track geometry database reveals specific information about the behaviour of the railway data and their processing to make maintenance decisions.A case study shows how certain sections of a railway track are monitored and evaluates maintenance practices on those sections. The study finds several different types of measurements are taken using several different measurement systems. It is difficult to integrate these data for proper processing. In addition, there are problems of incomplete or irregular data; this affects the derivation of information and the use of models to understand track irregularities.Given the problems of data processing and subsequent decision making, the study suggests implementing an IA framework with CBM. The study checks the achievement of three IA principles in the existing data: authenticity, integrity and availability. The results show data have problems of authenticity and integrity, something also mentioned by the stakeholders in interviews. In particular years and on certain track sections, CM data are more than 5 percent incomplete, significantly affecting analysis. Incomplete track measurement data reach as high as 63 percent for the parameters of standard deviation (STD), longitudinal level and STD cooperation. Inaccurate measured values for alignment long wavelength within certain speed limits reach as high as 71 percent. These indicators are important for calculating track quality but are either incomplete or incorrect, negatively affecting the calculation of the Q-value and estimations of the track quality. This, in turn, negatively affects the maintenance decisions. Using information assurance will increase the system performance by permitting stakeholders to make accurate decisions.The suggested information assurance framework can discover technical problems but it needs to be improved using technologies, techniques and services to ensure complete and accurate data are available to be processed for maintenance decisions.
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| 2. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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A robotic head using projected animated faces
- 2011
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the International Conference on Audio-Visual Speech Processing 2011. - Stockholm : KTH Royal Institute of Technology. ; , s. 71-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a setup which employs virtual animatedagents for robotic heads. The system uses a laser projector toproject animated faces onto a three dimensional face mask. This approach of projecting animated faces onto a three dimensional head surface as an alternative to using flat, two dimensional surfaces, eliminates several deteriorating effects and illusions that come with flat surfaces for interaction purposes, such as exclusive mutual gaze and situated and multi-partner dialogues. In addition to that, it provides robotic heads with a flexible solution for facial animation which takes into advantage the advancements of facial animation using computer graphics overmechanically controlled heads.
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| 3. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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Animated Faces for Robotic Heads : Gaze and Beyond
- 2011
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Ingår i: Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin/Heidelberg. - 9783642257742 ; , s. 19-35
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We introduce an approach to using animated faces for robotics where a static physical object is used as a projection surface for an animation. The talking head is projected onto a 3D physical head model. In this chapter we discuss the different benefits this approach adds over mechanical heads. After that, we investigate a phenomenon commonly referred to as the Mona Lisa gaze effect. This effect results from the use of 2D surfaces to display 3D images and causes the gaze of a portrait to seemingly follow the observer no matter where it is viewed from. The experiment investigates the perception of gaze direction by observers. The analysis shows that the 3D model eliminates the effect, and provides an accurate perception of gaze direction. We discuss at the end the different requirements of gaze in interactive systems, and explore the different settings these findings give access to.
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| 4. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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Audio-Visual Prosody : Perception, Detection, and Synthesis of Prominence
- 2010
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Ingår i: 3rd COST 2102 International Training School on Toward Autonomous, Adaptive, and Context-Aware Multimodal Interfaces. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin Heidelberg. - 9783642181832 ; , s. 55-71
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this chapter, we investigate the effects of facial prominence cues, in terms of gestures, when synthesized on animated talking heads. In the first study a speech intelligibility experiment is conducted, where speech quality is acoustically degraded, then the speech is presented to 12 subjects through a lip synchronized talking head carrying head-nods and eyebrow raising gestures. The experiment shows that perceiving visual prominence as gestures, synchronized with the auditory prominence, significantly increases speech intelligibility compared to when these gestures are randomly added to speech. We also present a study examining the perception of the behavior of the talking heads when gestures are added at pitch movements. Using eye-gaze tracking technology and questionnaires for 10 moderately hearing impaired subjects, the results of the gaze data show that users look at the face in a similar fashion to when they look at a natural face when gestures are coupled with pitch movements opposed to when the face carries no gestures. From the questionnaires, the results also show that these gestures significantly increase the naturalness and helpfulness of the talking head.
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| 5. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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Auditory visual prominence From intelligibility to behavior
- 2009
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Ingår i: Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1783-7677 .- 1783-8738. ; 3:4, s. 299-309
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Auditory prominence is defined as when an acoustic segment is made salient in its context. Prominence is one of the prosodic functions that has been shown to be strongly correlated with facial movements. In this work, we investigate the effects of facial prominence cues, in terms of gestures, when synthesized on animated talking heads. In the first study, a speech intelligibility experiment is conducted, speech quality is acoustically degraded and the fundamental frequency is removed from the signal, then the speech is presented to 12 subjects through a lip synchronized talking head carrying head-nods and eyebrows raise gestures, which are synchronized with the auditory prominence. The experiment shows that presenting prominence as facial gestures significantly increases speech intelligibility compared to when these gestures are randomly added to speech. We also present a follow-up study examining the perception of the behavior of the talking heads when gestures are added over pitch accents. Using eye-gaze tracking technology and questionnaires on 10 moderately hearing impaired subjects, the results of the gaze data show that users look at the face in a similar fashion to when they look at a natural face when gestures are coupled with pitch accents opposed to when the face carries no gestures. From the questionnaires, the results also show that these gestures significantly increase the naturalness and the understanding of the talking head.
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| 6. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Furhat : A Back-projected Human-like Robot Head for Multiparty Human-Machine Interaction
- 2012
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Ingår i: Cognitive Behavioural Systems. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin/Heidelberg. - 9783642345838 ; , s. 114-130
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this chapter, we first present a summary of findings from two previous studies on the limitations of using flat displays with embodied conversational agents (ECAs) in the contexts of face-to-face human-agent interaction. We then motivate the need for a three dimensional display of faces to guarantee accurate delivery of gaze and directional movements and present Furhat, a novel, simple, highly effective, and human-like back-projected robot head that utilizes computer animation to deliver facial movements, and is equipped with a pan-tilt neck. After presenting a detailed summary on why and how Furhat was built, we discuss the advantages of using optically projected animated agents for interaction. We discuss using such agents in terms of situatedness, environment, context awareness, and social, human-like face-to-face interaction with robots where subtle nonverbal and social facial signals can be communicated. At the end of the chapter, we present a recent application of Furhat as a multimodal multiparty interaction system that was presented at the London Science Museum as part of a robot festival,. We conclude the paper by discussing future developments, applications and opportunities of this technology.
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| 7. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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Furhat goes to Robotville: a large-scale multiparty human-robot interaction data collection in a public space
- 2012
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Ingår i: Proc of LREC Workshop on Multimodal Corpora. - Istanbul, Turkey.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the four days of the Robotville exhibition at the London Science Museum, UK, during which the back-projected head Furhat in a situated spoken dialogue system was seen by almost 8 000 visitors, we collected a database of 10 000 utterances spoken to Furhat in situated interaction. The data collection is an example of a particular kind of corpus collection of human-machine dialogues in public spaces that has several interesting and specific characteristics, both with respect to the technical details of the collection and with respect to the resulting corpus contents. In this paper, we take the Furhat data collection as a starting point for a discussion of the motives for this type of data collection, its technical peculiarities and prerequisites, and the characteristics of the resulting corpus.
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| 8. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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Studies on Using the SynFace Talking Head for the Hearing Impaired
- 2009
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Fonetik'09. - Stockholm : Stockholm University. - 9789163348921 ; , s. 140-143
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- SynFace is a lip-synchronized talking agent which is optimized as a visual reading support for the hearing impaired. In this paper wepresent the large scale hearing impaired user studies carried out for three languages in the Hearing at Home project. The user tests focuson measuring the gain in Speech Reception Threshold in Noise and the effort scaling when using SynFace by hearing impaired people, where groups of hearing impaired subjects with different impairment levels from mild to severe and cochlear implants are tested. Preliminaryanalysis of the results does not show significant gain in SRT or in effort scaling. But looking at large cross-subject variability in both tests, it isclear that many subjects benefit from SynFace especially with speech with stereo babble.
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| 9. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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Talking with Furhat - multi-party interaction with a back-projected robot head
- 2012
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Fonetik 2012. - Gothenberg, Sweden. ; , s. 109-112
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This is a condensed presentation of some recent work on a back-projected robotic head for multi-party interaction in public settings. We will describe some of the design strategies and give some preliminary analysis of an interaction database collected at the Robotville exhibition at the London Science Museum
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| 10. |
- Al Moubayed, Samer, et al.
(författare)
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Virtual Speech Reading Support for Hard of Hearing in a Domestic Multi-Media Setting
- 2009
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Ingår i: INTERSPEECH 2009. - BAIXAS : ISCA-INST SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOC. ; , s. 1443-1446
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper we present recent results on the development of the SynFace lip synchronized talking head towards multilinguality, varying signal conditions and noise robustness in the Hearing at Home project. We then describe the large scale hearing impaired user studies carried out for three languages. The user tests focus on measuring the gain in Speech Reception Threshold in Noise when using SynFace, and on measuring the effort scaling when using SynFace by hearing impaired people. Preliminary analysis of the results does not show significant gain in SRT or in effort scaling. But looking at inter-subject variability, it is clear that many subjects benefit from SynFace especially with speech with stereo babble noise.
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| 11. |
- Beskow, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Hearing at Home : Communication support in home environments for hearing impaired persons
- 2008
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Ingår i: INTERSPEECH 2008. - BAIXAS : ISCA-INST SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOC. - 9781615673780 ; , s. 2203-2206
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Hearing at Home (HaH) project focuses on the needs of hearing-impaired people in home environments. The project is researching and developing an innovative media-center solution for hearing support, with several integrated features that support perception of speech and audio, such as individual loudness amplification, noise reduction, audio classification and event detection, and the possibility to display an animated talking head providing real-time speechreading support. In this paper we provide a brief project overview and then describe some recent results related to the audio classifier and the talking head. As the talking head expects clean speech input, an audio classifier has been developed for the task of classifying audio signals as clean speech, speech in noise or other. The mean accuracy of the classifier was 82%. The talking head (based on technology from the SynFace project) has been adapted for German, and a small speech-in-noise intelligibility experiment was conducted where sentence recognition rates increased from 3% to 17% when the talking head was present.
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| 12. |
- Bisitz, T., et al.
(författare)
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Noise Reduction for Media Streams
- 2009
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Ingår i: NAG/DAGA'09 International Conference on Acoustics. - Red Hook, USA : Curran Associates, Inc.. - 9781618391995
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)
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| 13. |
- Blomberg, Mats, et al.
(författare)
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Children and adults in dialogue with the robot head Furhat - corpus collection and initial analysis
- 2012
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Ingår i: Proceedings of WOCCI. - Portland, OR : The International Society for Computers and Their Applications (ISCA).
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a large scale study in a public museum setting, where a back-projected robot head interacted with the visitors in multi-party dialogue. The exhibition was seen by almost 8000 visitors, out of which several thousand interacted with the system. A considerable portion of the visitors were children from around 4 years of age and adolescents. The collected corpus consists of about 10.000 user utterances. The head and a multi-party dialogue design allow the system to regulate the turn-taking behaviour, and help the robot to effectively obtain information from the general public. The commercial speech recognition component, supposedly designed for adult speakers, had considerably lower accuracy for the children. Methods are proposed for improving the performance for that speaker category.
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| 14. |
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| 15. |
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| 16. |
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| 17. |
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| 18. |
- Mirnig, Nicole, et al.
(författare)
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Face-To-Face With A Robot : What do we actually talk about?
- 2013
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Ingår i: International Journal of Humanoid Robotics. - 0219-8436. ; 10:1, s. 1350011-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While much of the state-of-the-art research in human-robot interaction (HRI) investigates task-oriented interaction, this paper aims at exploring what people talk about to a robot if the content of the conversation is not predefined. We used the robot head Furhat to explore the conversational behavior of people who encounter a robot in the public setting of a robot exhibition in a scientific museum, but without a predefined purpose. Upon analyzing the conversations, it could be shown that a sophisticated robot provides an inviting atmosphere for people to engage in interaction and to be experimental and challenge the robot's capabilities. Many visitors to the exhibition were willing to go beyond the guiding questions that were provided as a starting point. Amongst other things, they asked Furhat questions concerning the robot itself, such as how it would define a robot, or if it plans to take over the world. People were also interested in the feelings and likes of the robot and they asked many personal questions - this is how Furhat ended up with its first marriage proposal. People who talked to Furhat were asked to complete a questionnaire on their assessment of the conversation, with which we could show that the interaction with Furhat was rated as a pleasant experience.
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