Juan Pedro Uribe

Middleware for distributed services and mobile applications

In this paper, we describe the middleware that has evolved from our attempt to develop location-aware and user-aware services in ubiquitous environments. User mobility can cause numerous problems and limitations: user-preferred applications are not installed in the new location or device, user-specific configurations are needed, there are different OS and platforms, limited resources in the new node and so on. These restrictions sometimes prevent the user from performing what is required, anywhere and anytime. We propose a system in which, by enabling code installation and execution on remote nodes, these limitations are controlled. A prototype implementation of this approach has been constructed and we present the rationale, design, implementation and applications of the prototype system.

Low-latency online speaker tracking on the AMI Corpus of meeting conversations

Ambient Inteligence aims to create smart spaces providing services in a transparent and non-intrusive fashion, so context awareness and user adaptation are key issues. Speech can be exploited for user adaptation in such scenarios by continuously tracking speaker identity. However, most speaker tracking approaches require processing the full audio recording before determining speaker turns, which makes them unsuitable for online processing and low-latency decision-making. In this work a low-latency speaker tracking system is presented, which deals with continuous audio streams and outputs decisions at one-second intervals, by scoring fixed-length audio segments with a set of target speaker models. A smoothing technique is explored, based on the scores of past segments, which increases the robustness of tracking decisions to local variability. Experimental results are reported on the AMI Corpus of meeting conversations, revealing the effectiveness of the proposed approach when compared to an offline speaker tracking approach developed for reference.

Seismic survey design, data acquisition and processing of complex Andean structures

Narrow offset seismic data has limitations in areas with structural complexity. Seismic acquisition cost makes prohibitive to acquire quality seismic data, therefore balancing acquisition cost and data quality is a challenge. Combining technologies such as recording Wide Offset seismic to be processed in the Shot-Receiver domains using Wave Equation Migration (WEM) algorithms is a rational approach. A reduced number of shots during acquisition results in lower operational costs. Forward WEM modeling is required during the survey design to estimate the correct shot decimation in the presence of noise, to avoid losing of structural information.

Point‐source/point‐receiver land acquisition: Torrecillas‐Mexico experiment

The acquisition of a 3D seismic survey using the new land seismic technology based on point-source/point-receiver technology requires evaluating in advance, and as part of an integrated project design, the optimum sampling interval for sources and receivers. In December 2003, WesternGeco performed a field study in Torrecillas Mexico, to determine noise characteristic, spatial sampling requirements, and the required source effort to design a point-receiver/point-source 3D development survey in this area. We present in this paper the results of this study.