Auditory spatial perception during head movements. Orienting to stimuli frequently involves eye and head movements. This improves localisation, yet brings attendant problems (eg, blurring). These problems are well understood in vision, but not in audition, despite evidence for common neural mechanisms. We will examine auditory (and visual) localisation during head movements, showing head movements produce auditory suppression and spatial distortions (analogous to visual saccadic effects). This w ....Auditory spatial perception during head movements. Orienting to stimuli frequently involves eye and head movements. This improves localisation, yet brings attendant problems (eg, blurring). These problems are well understood in vision, but not in audition, despite evidence for common neural mechanisms. We will examine auditory (and visual) localisation during head movements, showing head movements produce auditory suppression and spatial distortions (analogous to visual saccadic effects). This will demonstrate the malleability of auditory spatial perception and the impoverished sensitivity of audition during head and self-motion. Knowledge of these distortions will inform applications such as cockpit design, where orienting to auditory signals is common, and other human/computer interfaces.
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Lexical retrieval and reading comprehension: Binding perceptual, lexical and conceptual information in on-line reading. Reading is a complex process that involves integrating sensory information extracted from text with stored memories about word meanings, syntactic structures and general knowledge. Most reading research has focused on the processing of isolated words, but normal reading requires integration processes that are not necessary to recognise single words. This research uses tasks req ....Lexical retrieval and reading comprehension: Binding perceptual, lexical and conceptual information in on-line reading. Reading is a complex process that involves integrating sensory information extracted from text with stored memories about word meanings, syntactic structures and general knowledge. Most reading research has focused on the processing of isolated words, but normal reading requires integration processes that are not necessary to recognise single words. This research uses tasks requiring sentence comprehension and measures of eye movements during reading to investigate how readers retrieve and combine information while reading to comprehend text. It will contribute to developing more comprehensive theories of normal reading that can inform methods of teaching reading and contribute to refinement of text recognition systems.Read moreRead less
ARC Research Network for Enabling Human Communication. The Human Communication Network promotes interdisciplinary research in speech, language, and sound by and between humans and machines. The network connects leading and emerging researchers across disciplines, exploits previously unrecognised intersections, supports interdisciplinary graduate training and exchanges, provides database storage infrastructure, and consults with industry and government to set, not follow, research agendas. By ge ....ARC Research Network for Enabling Human Communication. The Human Communication Network promotes interdisciplinary research in speech, language, and sound by and between humans and machines. The network connects leading and emerging researchers across disciplines, exploits previously unrecognised intersections, supports interdisciplinary graduate training and exchanges, provides database storage infrastructure, and consults with industry and government to set, not follow, research agendas. By generating an explosion of new approaches and knowledge, the network will build Australia's reputation as a leader in communication science and technology via advances in automatic speech recognition, distress call monitoring, hearing prostheses, web interfaces, and data retrieval and data mining systems.Read moreRead less
Information Delivery from Segmented Textual Data Streams. This project will contribute to the advancement of ICT innovation in Australia by developing a robust, reusable language understanding engine. The technology will be tailored to web applications, in the form of a conceptually-aware web search engine capable of tracking cross-document dialogues and identifying the core semantic thread of the dialogue. It will place Australia at the forefront of next-generation language technology developme ....Information Delivery from Segmented Textual Data Streams. This project will contribute to the advancement of ICT innovation in Australia by developing a robust, reusable language understanding engine. The technology will be tailored to web applications, in the form of a conceptually-aware web search engine capable of tracking cross-document dialogues and identifying the core semantic thread of the dialogue. It will place Australia at the forefront of next-generation language technology development, with applications in areas including concept-based multi-document summarisation and email surveillance.Read moreRead less
A scalable and portable question-answering system. The current availability of large volumes of free text digitally stored demands the development of methodologies that can automatically find specific answers to user questions about this "unstructured" information. The goal of this project is to develop a scalable portable and domain-independent real-time natural-language question-answering system that explores the logical contents of the text. To achieve this we will fuse current approaches to ....A scalable and portable question-answering system. The current availability of large volumes of free text digitally stored demands the development of methodologies that can automatically find specific answers to user questions about this "unstructured" information. The goal of this project is to develop a scalable portable and domain-independent real-time natural-language question-answering system that explores the logical contents of the text. To achieve this we will fuse current approaches to question answering with approaches that look at the logical contents of the questions and answer candidates. A central part of the project will be the characterisation of the optimal logical forms, the determination of efficient methods to create and store sentence logical forms of potentially large volumes of text, and the treatment of difficult questions by incorporating summarisation and text generation techniques.Read moreRead less
Advanced Capture, Analysis and Compression of Facial Images. Facial image processing is an area of research that holds an important key to future advances in intelligent human-to-computer and human-to-human systems. This project will investigate and develop superior approaches to image capturing of human faces for subsequent analysis and compression. It aims to develop innovative techniques to detect, extract and recognise faces, as well as more efficient ways to compress facial image data. This ....Advanced Capture, Analysis and Compression of Facial Images. Facial image processing is an area of research that holds an important key to future advances in intelligent human-to-computer and human-to-human systems. This project will investigate and develop superior approaches to image capturing of human faces for subsequent analysis and compression. It aims to develop innovative techniques to detect, extract and recognise faces, as well as more efficient ways to compress facial image data. This project will provide advanced Australian technology with applications in some of the world's fastest growing markets, including crowd surveillance, computer user interface, videoconferencing, and multimedia systems.Read moreRead less
Robust speech recognition in realistic hostile environments. Australia leads the world in the adoption of speech recognition technology but sadly lags in the development of the fundamental advances in the area. This research will help propel Australia to the forefront of new innovations in speech recognition technology and contributions to fundamental science. Our project will provide an excellent training ground for graduate students and researchers, with the real possibility of significant com ....Robust speech recognition in realistic hostile environments. Australia leads the world in the adoption of speech recognition technology but sadly lags in the development of the fundamental advances in the area. This research will help propel Australia to the forefront of new innovations in speech recognition technology and contributions to fundamental science. Our project will provide an excellent training ground for graduate students and researchers, with the real possibility of significant commercial benefit to the nation. The deployment of our system in the community will greatly enhance the defence and police forces ability for surveillance and security, and will provide new assistive aids to improve the quality of life and safety for the elderly and disabled.Read moreRead less
Enhanced Multilingual Speaker Recognition through the Incorporation of High-Level Features, Late Fusion and Discriminative Classification Methods. The development of robust multilingual speaker recognition systems will benefit the community through the elimination of fraud incurred by financial institutions and customers by enabling several person authentication applications such as: voice based signatures and document issuance; credit card verification by voice and secure over-the-phone financi ....Enhanced Multilingual Speaker Recognition through the Incorporation of High-Level Features, Late Fusion and Discriminative Classification Methods. The development of robust multilingual speaker recognition systems will benefit the community through the elimination of fraud incurred by financial institutions and customers by enabling several person authentication applications such as: voice based signatures and document issuance; credit card verification by voice and secure over-the-phone financial transactions. The technology will also assist in the protection of the community and safeguard Australia by enabling the implementation of the following: suspect identification using voice print; national security measures for combating terrorism by using voice to locate and track terrorists; preemptive criminal activity counter-measures; surveillance and secure building access by voice.Read moreRead less
Robust speaker recognition with reduced utterance duration and intersession variability. The development of robust and accurate speaker recognition systems will enable secure person authentication in over-the-phone financial transactions and benefit the community through the elimination of identity fraud incurred by customers and financial institutions. The technology will also assist in safeguarding Australia by enabling the implementation of suspect identification using voice and security meas ....Robust speaker recognition with reduced utterance duration and intersession variability. The development of robust and accurate speaker recognition systems will enable secure person authentication in over-the-phone financial transactions and benefit the community through the elimination of identity fraud incurred by customers and financial institutions. The technology will also assist in safeguarding Australia by enabling the implementation of suspect identification using voice and security measures for combating terrorism by using voice to locate and track terrorists. Our research at QUT Speech Research Lab is at the forefront of development in this field and will provide Australia with a technological advantage in the rapidly evolving global market for speaker recognition technology for person authentication applications.Read moreRead less
Robust Automatic Speaker Diarisation of Audio Documents by Exploiting Prior Sources of Information. Speaker Diarisation, the task of determining who spoke when, is a technology fundamental in deriving intelligent information from audio and multimedia resources. The requirement for efficient and accurate Speaker Diarisation systems, portable across different domains is heightened by the explosive growth of audio and multimedia archives online and throughout the world. This research will provide t ....Robust Automatic Speaker Diarisation of Audio Documents by Exploiting Prior Sources of Information. Speaker Diarisation, the task of determining who spoke when, is a technology fundamental in deriving intelligent information from audio and multimedia resources. The requirement for efficient and accurate Speaker Diarisation systems, portable across different domains is heightened by the explosive growth of audio and multimedia archives online and throughout the world. This research will provide the foundation for a commercial service of automatic Speaker Diarisation to be developed, growing Australia's impact on the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. The outcome of this research will also assist in the tracking of terrorist and unlawful activity by enabling effective intelligence gathering from different audio sources.Read moreRead less