News & Events

1,538 News items, Awards, Events and Talks related to MERL and its staff.


  •  NEWS    ICMLA 2012: publication by MERL researchers and others
    Date: December 12, 2012
    Where: International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA)
    Research Area: Machine Learning
    Brief
    • The paper "Compressive Clustering of High-Dimensional Data" by Ruta, A. and Porikli, F. was presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA).
  •  
  •  TALK    Speech recognition for closed-captioning
    Date & Time: Tuesday, December 11, 2012; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Takahiro Oku, NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Abstract
    • In this talk, I will present human-friendly broadcasting research conducted in NHK and research on speech recognition for real-time closed-captioning. The goal of human-friendly broadcasting research is to make broadcasting more accessible and enjoyable for everyone, including children, elderly, and physically challenged persons. The automatic speech recognition technology that NHK has developed makes it possible to create captions for the hearing impaired in real-time automatically. For sports programs such as professional sumo wrestling, a closed-captioning system has already been implemented in which captions are created by using speech recognition on a captioning re-speaker. In 2011, NHK General Television started broadcasting of closed captions for the information program "Morning Market". After the introduction of the implemented closed-captioning system, I will talk about our recent improvement obtained by an adaptation method that creates a more effective acoustic model using error correction results. The method reflects recognition error tendencies more effectively.
  •  
  •  NEWS    CDC 2012: 3 publications by Yebin Wang, Scott A. Bortoff, Stefano Di Cairano and others
    Date: December 10, 2012
    Where: IEEE Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
    MERL Contacts: Stefano Di Cairano; Scott A. Bortoff; Yebin Wang
    Brief
    • The papers "A Numerical Algorithm for Nonlinear L2-gain Optimal Control with Application to Vehicle Yaw Stability Control" by Milic, V., Di Cairano, S., Kasac, J., Bemporad, A. and Situm, Z., "The Rendezvous Dynamics under Linear Quadratic Optimal Control" by Di Cairano, S., Pascucci, C.A. and Bemporad, A. and "On the Optimal Trajectory Generation for Servomotors: A Hamiltonian Approach" by Wang, Y., Ueda , K. and Bortoff, S.A. were presented at the IEEE Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC).
  •  
  •  NEWS    APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing: publication by Shinji Watanabe and others
    Date: December 6, 2012
    Where: APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • The article "Bayesian Approaches to Acoustic Modeling: A Review" by Watanabe, S. and Nakamura, A. was published in APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing.
  •  
  •  NEWS    Asia-Pacific Signal & Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference 2012: 2 publications by Anthony Vetro, Huifang Sun, Robert A. Cohen and Dong Tian
    Date: December 3, 2012
    Where: Asia-Pacific Signal & Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference
    MERL Contacts: Anthony Vetro; Huifang Sun
    Brief
    • The papers "Depth Map Up-sampling Based on Edge Layers" by Graziosi, D.B., Tian, D. and Vetro, A. and "Joint Perceptually-based Intra Prediction and Quantization for HEVC" by Jin, G., Cohen, R., Vetro, A. and Sun, H. were presented at the Asia-Pacific Signal & Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference.
  •  
  •  EVENT    APSIPA 2012
    Date: Monday, December 3, 2012 - Thursday, December 6, 2012
    Location: Hollywood, CA
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Brief
    • MERL is a sponsor for APSIPA 2012, the fourth annual conference organized by Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association.
  •  
  •  NEWS    WIFS 2012: publication by Ye Wang, Shantanu D. Rane and others
    Date: December 2, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS)
    MERL Contact: Ye Wang
    Research Area: Information Security
    Brief
    • The paper "A Framework for Privacy Preserving Statistical Analysis on Distributed Databases" by Lin, B-R, Wang, Y. and Rane, S. was presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS).
  •  
  •  NEWS    AIP Chaos: publication by Piyush Grover and others
    Date: December 1, 2012
    Where: AIP Chaos
    Research Area: Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • The article "Topological Chaos, Braiding and Bifurcation of Almost-cyclic Sets" by Grover, P., Ross, S., Stremler, M. and Kumar, P. was published in AIP Chaos.
  •  
  •  NEWS    Techniques for Noise Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition: publication by Jonathan Le Roux, John R. Hershey and others
    Date: November 28, 2012
    Where: Techniques for Noise Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition
    MERL Contact: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • The article "Factorial Models for Noise Robust Speech Recognition" by Hershey, J.R., Rennie, S.J. and Le Roux, J. was published in the book Techniques for Noise Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition.
  •  
  •  NEWS    IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing: 2 publications by Kyeong Jin Kim and others
    Date: November 20, 2012
    Where: IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
    Brief
    • The articles "Performance Analysis of Cognitive Spectrum-Sharing Single-Carrier Systems with Relay Selection" by Kim, K.J., Duong, T.Q. and Tran, X.-N. and "Performance Analysis of Cyclic Prefixed Single-Carrier Spectrum Sharing Relay Systems in Primary User Interference" by Kim, K.J., Duong, T.Q., Poor, H.V. and Shu, L. were published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
  •  
  •  TALK    Sensitive Manipulation
    Date & Time: Thursday, November 15, 2012; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Eduardo Torres-Jara, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Abstract
    • This talk presents an alternative approach to robotic manipulation. In this approach, manipulation is mainly guided by tactile feedback as opposed to vision. The motivation behind this approach stems from the fact that manipulating an object necessarily implies coming into contact with it. As a result, directly sensing physical contact seems more important than vision to control the interaction of the object and the robot. In this work, the traditional approach of a highly precise arm guided by a vision system is replaced by one that uses a low mechanical impedance arm with dense tactile sensing and exploration capabilities.

      The robots OBRERO and GoBot have been built to implement this approach. We have developed a novel tactile sensing technology and mounted our sensors on the robots' hands. These sensors are biologically inspired and present adequate features for manipulation. The success of this approach is shown by picking up objects in a poorly modeled environment. This task, simple for humans, has been a challenge for robots. The robot can deal with new, unmodeled objects. Specifically, OBRERO can gently contact, explore, lift, and place an object in a different location. It can also detect basic slippage and external forces acting on an object while it is held. These tasks can be performed successfully with very light objects, without fixtures, and on slippery surfaces. Similarly, GoBot is capable of manipulating small objects such as the stones in the game GO. Both OBRERO and GoBot perform all of their manipulations using tactile feedback.
  •  
  •  NEWS    IEEE Signal Processing Letters: publication by Zafer Sahinoglu and others
    Date: November 15, 2012
    Where: IEEE Signal Processing Letters
    Research Area: Signal Processing
    Brief
    • The article "Joint Voltage and Phase Unbalance Detector for Three Phase Power Systems" by Sun, M., Demirtas, S. and Sahinoglu, Z. was published in IEEE Signal Processing Letters.
  •  
  •  NEWS    ICPR 2012: publication by Ming-Yu Liu and others
    Date: November 11, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR)
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The paper "A Grassmann Manifold-based Domain Adaptation Approach" by Zheng, J., Liu, M.-Y., Chellappa, R. and Phillips, P.J. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR).
  •  
  •  TALK    Robust Preconditioners for a boundary control elliptic problem
    Date & Time: Wednesday, November 7, 2012; 12:00 PM
    Speaker: Prof. Marcus Sarkis, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    Abstract
    • We discuss the following problem: Given a target function on a domain, what is the Neumann data on the boundary so that its harmonic extension into the domain is the closest function to the target function in the L2 norm? For convex polygonal domains, we show that regularization is not needed in case the space for the Neumann data is chosen properly. In the second part of the talk we discuss solvers for the associated discrete Hessian which are robust with respect to regularization parameters and mesh sizes.
  •  
  •  NEWS    ISMAR 2012: publication by Yuichi Taguchi, Srikumar Ramalingam and others
    Date: November 5, 2012
    Where: International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR)
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The paper "SLAM Using Both Points and Planes for Hand-Held 3D Sensors" by Taguchi, Y., Jian, Y.-D., Ramalingam, S. and Feng, C. was presented at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR).
  •  
  •  NEWS    IEEE Signal Processing Magazine: publication by Shinji Watanabe and others
    Date: November 1, 2012
    Where: IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • The article "Structured Discriminative Models For Speech Recognition" by Gales, M., Watanabe, S. and Fosler-Lussier, E. was published in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
  •  
  •  NEWS    European Radar Conference (EuRAD) 2012: publication by Koon Hoo Teo, Bingnan Wang and others
    Date: October 31, 2012
    Where: European Radar Conference (EuRAD)
    MERL Contact: Bingnan Wang
    Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
    Brief
    • The paper "Accurate Models for Spiral Resonators" by Ellstein, D., Wang, B. and Teo, K.H. was presented at the European Radar Conference (EuRAD).
  •  
  •  NEWS    POWERCON 2012: publication by Daniel N. Nikovski, Hongbo Sun and others
    Date: October 30, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON)
    MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
    Research Area: Data Analytics
    Brief
    • The paper "Decoupled Three-Phase Load Flow Method for Unbalanced Distribution Systems" by Sun, H., Dubey, A., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON).
  •  
  •  NEWS    PMI 2012: publication by Alan Sullivan and others
    Date: October 29, 2012
    Where: CIRP Conference on Process Machine Interactions (PMI)
    Research Area: Computer Vision
    Brief
    • The paper "High Accuracy Computation of Geometric Properties of Cutter Workpiece Intersection using Distance Fields for NC Milling" by Erdim, H. and Sullivan, A. was presented at the CIRP Conference on Process Machine Interactions (PMI).
  •  
  •  NEWS    MILCOM 2012: publication by Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Philip V. Orlik and others
    Date: October 29, 2012
    Where: IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM)
    MERL Contacts: Philip V. Orlik; Toshiaki Koike-Akino
    Research Area: Communications
    Brief
    • The paper "Robust Receiver Algorithms to Mitigate Partial-Band and Partial-Time Interference in LDPC-coded OFDM Systems" by Li, L., Annavajjala, R., Koike-Akino, T. and Orlik, P. was presented at the IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM).
  •  
  •  NEWS    ISAP 2012: publication by William S. Yerazunis, Koon Hoo Teo and Bingnan Wang
    Date: October 29, 2012
    Where: IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP)
    MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis
    Research Area: Electric Systems
    Brief
    • The paper "Power Delivery Optimization for a Mobile Power Transfer System based on Resonator Arrays" by Yerazunis, W., Wang, B. and Teo, K.H. was presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP).
  •  
  •  TALK    Factorial Hidden Restricted Boltzmann Machines for Noise Robust Speech Recognition
    Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 3:20 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Steven J. Rennie, IBM Research
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
  •  
  •  TALK    Zero-Resource Speech Pattern and Sub-Word Unit Discovery
    Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 9:10 AM
    Speaker: Prof. Jim Glass and Chia-ying Lee, MIT CSAIL
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
  •  
  •  TALK    Understanding Audition via Sound Analysis and Synthesis
    Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 11:45 AM
    Speaker: Josh McDermott, MIT, BCS
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
  •  
  •  TALK    Latent Topic Modeling of Conversational Speech
    Date & Time: Wednesday, October 24, 2012; 1:30 PM
    Speaker: Dr. Timothy J. Hazen and David Harwath, MIT Lincoln Labs / MIT CSAIL
    MERL Host: Jonathan Le Roux
    Research Area: Speech & Audio
  •