News & Events

1,511 News items, Awards, Events and Talks related to MERL and its staff.


  •  TALK    Self-Organizing Units (SOUs): Training Speech Recognizers Without Any Transcribed Audio
    Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 2:15 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Herb Gish, BBN - Raytheon
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
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  •  TALK    Advances in Acoustic Modeling at IBM Research: Deep Belief Networks, Sparse Representations
    Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 9:55 AM
    Speaker: Dr. Tara Sainath, IBM Research
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
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  •  TALK    Recognizing and Classifying Environmental Sounds
    Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 11:00 AM
    Speaker: Prof. Dan Ellis, Columbia University
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
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  •  NEWS    HFES 2012: publication by Bret A. Harsham and others
    Date: October 22, 2012
    Where: Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES)
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • The paper "Evaluation of Two Types of In-Vehicle Music Retrieval and Navigation Systems" by Zhang, J., Borowsky, A., Schmidt-Nielsen, B., Harsham, B., Weinberg, G., Romoser, M.R.E. and Fisher, D.L. was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES).
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  •  NEWS    ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference 2012: publication by Yiming Zhao
    Date: October 17, 2012
    Where: ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Brief
    • The paper "Decentralized Finite-Time Stabilizing Feedback Network Control" by Zhao, Y. was presented at the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference.
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  •  EVENT    Automotive UI 2012 - 4th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
    Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - Friday, October 19, 2012
    Location: Portsmouth, NH
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • MERL is a sponsor for the Fourth International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, Automotive UI 2012.
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  •  NEWS    ESARS 2012: publication by Kenji Kataoka, Daniel N. Nikovski and others
    Date: October 16, 2012
    Where: Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS)
    MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Brief
    • The paper "Markov Decision Processes for Train Run Curve Optimization" by Nikovski, D., Lidicky, B., Zhang, W., Kataoka, K. and Yoshimoto, K. was presented at Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS).
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  •  NEWS    IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe) 2012: publication by Daniel N. Nikovski, Hongbo Sun and others
    Date: October 14, 2012
    Where: IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe)
    MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Brief
    • The paper "Hybrid Three-Phase Load Flow Method for Ungrounded Distribution Systems" by Sun, H., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was presented at IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe).
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  •  NEWS    3DIMPVT 2012: publication by Ming-Yu Liu and others
    Date: October 13, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Conference on 3D Imaging, Modeling, Processing, Visualization and Transmission (3DIMPVT)
    Research Area: Machine Learning
    Brief
    • The paper "Classification and Pose Estimation of Vehicles in Videos by 3D Modeling within Discrete-Continuous Optimization" by Hodlmoser, M., Micusik, B., Liu, M.-Y., Pollefeys, M. and Kaampel, M. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on 3D Imaging, Modeling, Processing, Visualization and Transmission (3DIMPVT).
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  •  TALK    Interactive Visual Analysis for Engineering Applications
    Date & Time: Thursday, October 11, 2012; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Kresimir Matkovic, VRVis Research Center, Vienna
    Abstract
    • Increasing complexity and a large number of control parameters make the design and understanding of modern engineering systems impossible without simulation today. Advances in simulation technology and ability to run multiple simulations with different sets of parameters poses new challenges for analysis techniques. In this talk we will present our experiences in exploration and analysis of simulation ensembles realized in several projects with experts from automotive, meteorology, and medical domains. We tightly integrate simulation, numerical optimization, and interactive visual analysis in a unified framework. Our new data model supports families of curves and families of surfaces. Accompanying interactive visual analysis techniques offer new possibilities for data exploration and analysis. It is possible to start with a simple analysis, to continue with identifying hidden features, and finally to explore very complex dependencies using advanced interaction and on-the-fly data derivation and aggregation. All proposed techniques will be illustrated using a coordinated multiple views system and real-life data from various projects with scientists and engineers, including the optimization of an automotive rail injection system.
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  •  TALK    Non-negative Hidden Markov Modeling of Audio
    Date & Time: Thursday, October 11, 2012; 2:30 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Gautham J. Mysore, Adobe
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Abstract
    • Non-negative spectrogram factorization techniques have become quite popular in the last decade as they are effective in modeling the spectral structure of audio. They have been extensively used for applications such as source separation and denoising. These techniques however fail to account for non-stationarity and temporal dynamics, which are two important properties of audio. In this talk, I will introduce the non-negative hidden Markov model (N-HMM) and the non-negative factorial hidden Markov model (N-FHMM) to model single sound sources and sound mixtures respectively. They jointly model the spectral structure and temporal dynamics of sound sources, while accounting for non-stationarity. I will also discuss the application of these models to various applications such as source separation, denoising, and content based audio processing, showing why they yield improved performance when compared to non-negative spectrogram factorization techniques.
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  •  NEWS    ECCV 2012: 3 publications by Yuichi Taguchi, Tyler W. Garaas, Srikumar Ramalingam, C. Oncel Tuzel and Amit K. Agrawal
    Date: October 7, 2012
    Where: European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The papers "Motion-Aware Structured Light Using Spatio-Temporal Decodable Patterns" by Taguchi, Y., Agrawal, A. and Tuzel, O., "Rainbow Flash Camera: Depth Edge Extraction Using Complementary Colors" by Taguchi, Y. and "Monocular Visual Odometry and Dense 3D Reconstruction for On-Road Vehicles" by Zhu, M., Ramalingam, S., Taguchi, Y. and Garaas, T. were presented at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV).
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  •  NEWS    Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2012: publication by Arvind Raghunathan, Daniel N. Nikovski and others
    Date: October 1, 2012
    Where: Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing
    MERL Contacts: Arvind Raghunathan; Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Optimization
    Brief
    • The paper "Global Optimization of Optimal Power Flow Using a Branch & Bound Algorithm" by Gopalakrishnan, A., Raghunathan, A.U., Nikovski, D. and Biegler, L.T. was presented at the Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.
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  •  EVENT    ICIP 2012 - IEEE International Conference on Image Processing
    Date: Sunday, September 30, 2012 - Wednesday, October 3, 2012
    Location: Orlando, FL
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • Anthony Vetro is the Industrial Co-chair of ICIP 2012, the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, to be held in Orlando, Florida, in September 2012.
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  •  NEWS    ICIP 2012: 4 publications by Anthony Vetro, Shantanu D. Rane, Huifang Sun and Dong Tian
    Date: September 30, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)
    MERL Contacts: Anthony Vetro; Huifang Sun
    Brief
    • The papers "An Attribute-Based Framework for Privacy Preserving Image Querying" by Rane, S. and Sun, W., "Emerging Cryptographic Challenges in Image and Video Processing" by Puech, W., Erkin, Z., Barni, M., Rane, S. and Lagendijk, R.L., "A Local Depth Image Enhancement Scheme for View Synthesis" by Wang, Y., Tian, D. and Vetro, A. and "On Modeling the Rendering Error in 3D Video" by Cheung, N.-M., Tian, D., Vetro, A. and Sun, H. were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP).
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  •  NEWS    International Journal of Computer Vision: publication by Yuichi Taguchi and Srikumar Ramalingam
    Date: September 27, 2012
    Where: International Journal of Computer Vision
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The article "A Theory of Minimal 3D Point to 3D Plane Registration and Its Generalization" by Ramalingam, S. and Taguchi, Y. was published in International Journal of Computer Vision.
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  •  NEWS    MMSP 2012: publication by Petros T. Boufounos, Shantanu D. Rane and others
    Date: September 17, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP)
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Digital Video, Computational Sensing
    Brief
    • The paper "Quantized Embeddings of Scale-Invariant Image Features for Mobile Augmented Reality" by Li, M., Rane, S. and Boufounos, P. was presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP).
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  •  NEWS    ECOC 2012: publication by Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Keisuke Kojima, Bingnan Wang, Kieran J. Parsons and others
    Date: September 16, 2012
    Where: European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)
    MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Kieran Parsons
    Research Area: Electronic and Photonic Devices
    Brief
    • The paper "An MMI-based Polarization Splitter Using Patterned Metal and Tilted Joint" by Yuan, W., Kojima, K., Wang, B., Koike-Akino, T., Parsons, K., Nishikawa, S. and Yagyu, E. was presented at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC).
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  •  TALK    Tensor representation of speaker space for arbitrary speaker conversion
    Date & Time: Thursday, September 6, 2012; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Daisuke Saito, The University of Tokyo
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Abstract
    • In voice conversion studies, realization of conversion from/to an arbitrary speaker's voice is one of the important objectives. For this purpose, eigenvoice conversion (EVC) based on an eigenvoice Gaussian mixture model (EV-GMM) was proposed. In the EVC, similarly to speaker recognition approaches, a speaker space is constructed based on GMM supervectors which are high-dimensional vectors derived by concatenating the mean vectors of each of the speaker GMMs. In the speaker space, each speaker is represented by a small number of weight parameters of eigen-supervectors. In this talk, we revisit construction of the speaker space by introducing the tensor analysis of training data set. In our approach, each speaker is represented as a matrix of which the row and the column respectively correspond to the Gaussian component and the dimension of the mean vector, and the speaker space is derived by the tensor analysis of the set of the matrices. Our approach can solve an inherent problem of supervector representation, and it improves the performance of voice conversion. Experimental results of one-to-many voice conversion demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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  •  NEWS    VTC 2012: publication by Philip V. Orlik and others
    Date: September 3, 2012
    Where: IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC)
    MERL Contact: Philip V. Orlik
    Research Area: Communications
    Brief
    • The paper "Location Based Data Delivery Schedulers for Vehicle Telematics Applications" by Xu, K., Orlik, P., Nagai, Y. and Saito, M. was presented at the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC).
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  •  NEWS    Journal of Communications: publication by Jinyun Zhang and others
    Date: September 1, 2012
    Where: Journal of Communications
    MERL Contact: Jinyun Zhang
    Research Area: Communications
    Brief
    • The article "Combating Interference: MU-MIMO, CoMP, and HetNet" by Liu, L., Zhang, J., Yi, Y., Li, H. and Zhang, J. was published in Journal of Communications.
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  •  AWARD    MMSP 2012 Top 10% Paper Award
    Date: September 1, 2012
    Awarded to: Mu Li, Shantanu Rane and Petros Boufounos
    Awarded for: "Quantized Embeddings of Scale-Invariant Image Features for Mobile Augmented Reality"
    Awarded by: IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP)
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Digital Video, Computational Sensing
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  •  NEWS    EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing: publication by Kyeong Jin Kim and others
    Date: August 24, 2012
    Where: EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing
    Brief
    • The article "An Explicit Construction of Fast Cocyclic Jacket Transform on the Finite Field with Any Size" by Guo, Y., Lee, M.H. and Kim, K.J. was published in EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing.
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  •  NEWS    NMPC 2012: publication by Stefano Di Cairano
    Date: August 23, 2012
    Where: IFAC Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Conference (NMPC)
    MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
    Research Area: Control
    Brief
    • The paper "An Industry Perspective on MPC in Large Volumes Applications: Potential Benefits and Open Challenges" by Di Cairano, S. was presented at the IFAC Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Conference (NMPC).
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  •  NEWS    SENSORCOMM 2012: publication by Philip V. Orlik, Jinyun Zhang, Jianlin Guo and others
    Date: August 19, 2012
    Where: International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM)
    MERL Contacts: Jinyun Zhang; Philip V. Orlik; Jianlin Guo
    Research Area: Communications
    Brief
    • The paper "Loop-Free Routing in Low-Power and Lossy Networks" by Guo, J., Han, C., Orlik, P., Zhang, J. and Ishibashi, K. was presented at the International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM).
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