Philip R. Thrift

Speech-Aware Multimedia

Computer users have long desired a personal software agent that could execute verbal commands. Todays World Wide Web (WWW or Web), with its point and click hypertext interface, makes a tremendous amount of information readily available online. A speech interface would make the Web even more powerful, allowing us to access information by surfing the Web by voice. TI have developed Speech Aware Multimedia (SAM) with this in mind, to make information on the Web more accessible and useful. They combined an innovative speech recognition engine with the Web to let anyone browse arbitrary Web pages using only speech as the input medium. Speech brings added flexibility and power to the classical Web interface and makes information access more natural. Todays speech recognition capability is well matched to Web browsing. The Web page provides a natural, well defined context for a speech recognition application. The recognition engine does not need to recognize any and all possible phrases, but only those phrases pertaining to the specific page in view at the moment. This context imposes limits that significantly aid recognition performance. Furthermore, the visual information on a page prompts the user on what to request and how to request it by voice.

JTV: Java-enabled television

This paper provides a general overview of the capabilities provided by the JTV API. The JTV API defines an extension of Java and the Java Media Framework for TV-centric devices and services. This API enables programmers to develop and distribute interactive applications and applets that combine the power of Java with both enhanced broadcast and interactive television content. JTV provides an open Java- based platform for developers of set-top and TV software.

Common Lisp relations: an extension of Lisp for logic programming

The author presents a set of relational constructs that support logic programming in the Common Lisp framework. These constructs support locally defined and first-class relations, an interface between function and relation-calling logical variables as first-class Lisp objects, and the ability to define relations over Common Lisp structures. The relational programming constructs are amenable to standard Prolog compilation techniques, thus making possible high-speed performance. A relation is an executable specification defined in terms of a sequence of clause-expressions. Each clause-expression specifies a list of argument patterns that determine the selection and local bindings of the clause as well as a sequence of goals that must be satisfied for the clause to succeed. Sequences of clause-expressions are used for defining relations and single lambda-expressions are used for defining functions. As an analog to the usual function-calling execution mode of Common Lisp, a relation-calling mechanism is provided. The semantics of passing values between relations and functions is described.<<ETX>>

Generating image filters for target recognition by Hebbian neural network learning

range of supersonic Mach numbers. EMTAC captured the basic shape and overall levels of the surface pressure distribution over the range of supersonic Mach numbers. The good agreement between EMTAC and experiment of the force and surface pressure distribution provides a high level of confidence in the application of EMTAC for preliminary analysis of sharp-edge planforms representative of advanced military aircraft configurations. Qualitative assessment of the computed flowfield properties and the upper-surface flow classification studies shows that EMTAC captured the flowfield characteristics associated with sharp-edged planforms. This assessment provides additional confidence for applying EMTAC in the preliminary design phase of advanced aircraft configurations. Overall, the study shows that EMTAC can be successfully applied in the preliminary analysis and design of sharp-edged advanced military aircraft.