MULTITEL R&D centre Multimedia Télécommunication Mons
Mar 21, 2016
MULTITEL R&D centreMultimedia
TélécommunicationMons
MULTITEL - Key dates
2000 : MULTITEL N.P.O. : Independent Research Centre
Networking
Signal ProcessingTelecommunications
Optics Voice Signal
1995 : Under the Objective 1 programme of the European Community and the Walloon Region, foundation of the Centre of Excellence MULTITEL coming from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons
Faculté Polytechnique de Mons
Multitel - Mission• Objective 1 – European Union and Walloon Region
• Funding of Research Activities from 2001 to 2006• Specific Projects which aim to
– Be R&D Partner of Walloon companies– Enhance access of Walloon Companies to High Technologies– Promote Spin off Project / realize Incubator objectives – Enhance access of Walloon Companies to Research Fundings
• European and National Research Project• Eureka / IST / ESPRIT / National Projects (Collective Research – Waleo – Initiative - …)
– FASTY (IST – 2000 )– FABRICAP (National Project – 2000 )
• EoI (NoE / Integrated Project) – 5 NoE and 12 Integrated Projects have been submitted, several projects will
be submitted• Spin-off royalties
• Babel Technologies SA – 1997– (Speech Technologies / Turn Over : 5 Mio Euro)
• IT-OPTICS SA – 2000 – (Optical Components / Free Software Solutions – Start-up – 0.5 Mio Euro 2002)
Multitel - Research Centre
• Independant research centre, created in 2000 (Non-Profit-Organisation)
• 63 persons• Management staff ( 10 persons )• Research staff ( 53 persons )
• Based in Mons, BELGIUM ( 2 Sites)
• Research Area – Key topics• Telecommunication (Optical Fiber Telecommunication)• Signal Processing (Speech Synthesis and recognition)
• Creation of 2 Spin Off :
• Babel Technologies (voice signal processing)• It-Optics (video streaming, open source software and network management)
Multitel - Activities / Domains
DOMAINS• Networking
• Optical Telecommunications
• Signal Processing
• Sound and Image coding
• Speech Technologies (Speech Synthesis, speaker and Speech recognition)
Independent expertise centre in the fields of :ACTIVITIES
• Research & Development
• Development of prototypes• Availability of algorithms adapted
to applications• Embedded Software (Speech
Synthesis and Recognition)• European and National Research
Projects• Services
• Consulting, audit, Technological Surveillance
• Metrology – Labs / on site (Laboratory Certification 17025 in final stage)
• Prototyping• Small Series Production• Training (45 Sessions covering all
domains)
MULTITEL - organisation
Optical department
(18)
Speech & Signal
(18)
Image & video processing (10)
Management Board
Administrative & financial department
Scientific & technical department
Marketing & business
development (5)
Legal & intellectual property rights (2)
HRM (2)
Networking(8)
• Background funds « objectif 1 » (Europe / region)• Industrial & private contracts ( Spin-off, strategic partnership)• Europe (FP6,IP,Noe,CA,CRAFT,EUREKA,EURESCOM,…)• Bilateral national agreement (program technolangue [F],
interreg)• National (SSTC,…)• Regional (Initiative,Collective research, First, Wist, « réseau »)• Royalties for exploitation of our technologies
Funding sources
Speech Speech technologytechnology
• Since 20 years active in speech• Activity domains:
- ASR based on HMM/ANN (robustness against noise)- Desktop ASR (voice portal,VXML, dedicated application)- Embedded system speech reco (on PDA & starting on PSOC)- Speech synthesis (signal part [MBROLA],NUU)- Speech synthesis ( NLP)- Implementation on any embedded platform - Multilingual speech SDK are available
(28 Languages by Babeltech spin off) - We have full control of our speech technologies- Future : integration of speech in
multimodal Interface (haptic/speech)
Major & EC Speech projects
Winner of the IT European Award 1996
SPeech Recognition Algorithms for Connectionist Hybrids (95-98)
Thematic Indexing of Spoken Language (97-00)
REcognition of Speech by Partial Information TEchniques (99-02)
Faster Typing for Disabled Persons (01-03)
More info : www.multitel.be & http://tcts.fpms.ac.be
FASTY : FASter TYping…
• Natural Language Processing,
• Artificial Intelligence,
• Self-adaptive interfaces
• Dedicated knowledge databases
• Dutch, French, German, Swedish
Improved typing rate
Higher text generation rate
FASTY : FASter TYping…Current solutions :
• Typing rate saving < 50%
• English-based
FASTY : • Typing rate saving > 50%
• Prediction of compounds and proper inflectional forms
• Generic algorithms to ensure cross-language portability
• Adaptable and Multimodal User Interfaces
• Dictionaries based on actual use of the predictor
FASTY : FASter TYping…
Speech synthesis' role : For users who have reading problems
words in the prediction list read aloud
audible feedback of a selected word
Speech synthesis' principle : Combination of
a grapheme to phoneme converter
a synthesizer (MBROLA) based on the
concatenation of diphones
FASTY : FASter TYping…
Demo :
More information is available on : http://www.fortec.tuwien.ac.at/reha.e/projects/fasty/fasty.html
SYPOLE : SYstème auditif POrtable de LEcture pour personne mal-voyante
Target : To have a mobile reading help system for blind users
Challenges :• End-users are project partners !!
critical for the system ergonomics ;
• Improvement of embedded Speech synthesis ;
• Adapt both OCR and pattern recognition to embedded platforms with the lowest performance degradation ;
SYPOLE : SYstème auditif POrtable de LEcture pour personne mal-voyante
Current solutions : • experimental systems for auditory video representations ;
• non-mobile solutions (transportable but not mobile)
SYPOLE should be:• a stand-alone, small-size and mobile prototype ;
• able to recognize text and pictures ;
• able to synthesize them into a voice signal ;
• able to read train timetables, bank notes, price labels, headers, …
Signal Department Data Fusion Team
• Positioning applicationsCollaboration with major train
manufacturer– Safe odometry applications– Integration of GNSS data– Generic framework, may be used for other
applications• Other transport modes• Low-cost positioning
Signal Department Data Fusion Team
• Biomedical applications
– 1D (EEG, …) and 2D (images) signals analysis
– Classification according to relevant features
– Applications to • Automatic sleep analysis• Image segmentation• …
Signal Department Data Fusion Team
• Monitoring applications– Apply experience in fault &
change detection to other fields– Contacts for :
• Automatic monitoring of welding process based on optical & acoustic information
• Automatic assessment of product quality based on acoustic information
Multitel – Spin offs
• Babel Technologies– Creation in February 1997– Origin : Faculté Polytechnique de Mons– Initial Objectives : Commercialization of research
results (Speech technologies)– Position on the market : Provider of technologies
• IT-OPTICS– Creation in November 2000– Origin : Multitel Asbl– Initial Objectives : Commercialization of research
results (Telecom solutions)– Position on the market : Provider of technologies,
products and services
Questions ?
Multitel – In mobinews
• Embedded mobile system development– Embedded speech ASR provider
(with adaptation to VLBR database)– Improvement of front-end (secondary)– Algorithm simplification for integration in JAVA plug in for
GSM– Study of speech smooth menu-driven interface combining
speech & haptic interface,lexical and semantic information– Dialog management for content provider application