SPEAKER: WAYNE WARD
Senior Research Computer Scientist, Carnegie Mellon University
ABSTRACT:
SPEAKER BIO:
Conversational Animated Agents: Interface to the Electronic World
The volume of data that people can access is growing at an incredible
rate. Advances in sensors, data storage and network connectivity are making
huge amounts of data available. So much that the sheer volume provides
problems for access, the familiar information glut problem. How can we
possibly sort through so much information to find just what we want,
especially if we're not sure what we want but have a general idea. When
there are 100,000 cable channels, how do you decide what to watch in time
to see it? One answer is intelligent agents, who know your preferences and
who carry on a conversation with you to determine what you want. The agents
will combine speech understanding, speech synthesis, facial animation and
face tracking technologies to provide natural interaction with users, as if
you were talking to a human assistant. The assistants will improve access
for blind and motor handicapped users by voice interaction. Hearing
impaired users will be able to read speech from the lip movements or have
the agent produce American Sign Language. Users will not conduct keyword
searches through the huge space of available documents, but discuss with
the agent what they want. The agent will take care of finding, translating,
digesting and summarizing and propagating the information.
Dr. Wayne Ward is a Senior Research Computer Scientist at Carnegie Mellon
University. He received his B.A. degree in Applied Mathematics and
Psychology from Rice University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in
Psychology from the University of Colorado in 1981 and 1984, respectively.
Dr Ward has worked in the Speech Group at CMU since 1986, where he conducts
research into understanding spontaneous speech. Dr. Ward is also president
of Muticom Research, Inc., a language technology company based in Pittsburgh.