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Multilingual User Gaming Interaction: Let's Talk About D-Box
MONS, Belgium, January 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
Imagine a game between several users, speaking different languages and interfacing
using the same voice. At Acapela Group, we are working on it.
Imagine a game between several users, speaking different languages. And imagine them
playing without caring about language barriers, because the interface is taking care of
that. Then imagine that they all hear the ongoing conversation with the same voice, but
each in his or her own language. Because the same voice speaks several languages. We are
talking about Multilingual User Gaming Interaction, the aim of the D-Box project.
D-Box's main goal is to develop and test an innovative architecture for conversational
agents whose purpose is to support multilingual collaboration between users on a common
problem in an interactive application.
The interactive agent will enable typewritten and/or spoken collaboration in the
users' native language by mediating communication; all user interactions will be
transmitted through the D-Box multilingual agent which will (1) manage and support
dialogic interactions based on its understanding of the users' shared goals, and (2)
process, extract, and transfer knowledge among users. The agent will have no translation
capabilities, but will instead have access to rich linguistic resources in multiple
languages and domain-and application-specific knowledge bases.
The project is funded by EUREKA (http://www.eurekanetwork.org ), the Pan-European
research and development funding and coordination organization. The project leader is
Mi'pu'mi Games GmbH and the project partners are Acapela Group, Idiap Research Institute,
Koemei SA, Sikom Software GmbH and Universitat des Saarlandes.
'Gaming has not yet entered the speech dimension and the D-Box project is a great
opportunity to introduce real conversational capabilities to new games in the very near
future. We are looking forward to seeing and hearing developers design their games with
conversation at the heart of their game architecture. We are very enthusiastic about being
part of this project, about contributing our expertise and about working with such
prestigious partners,' comments Lars-Erik Larsson, CEO of Acapela Group.
From a research point of view, the project requires building a multilingual
conversational agent which will seamlessly interact with multiple users speaking different
languages and driven by a common goal defined by the game. This involves the development
and integration of multilingual speech recognition systems, multilingual speech synthesis,
multilingual dialogue modelling, and cross-domain adaptation resources.
From an integration and evaluation point of view the project's key innovative idea is
that the overall anticipated framework will be application-agnostic.
D-Box is concerned with addressing scalability, a common problem with today's
interactive conversational systems, through the development of a conversational agent that
is cheaply and easily portable across languages and adaptable to different domains and
environments. In order to ensure portability, the framework developed in the context of a
game scenario will be in parallel evaluated and tested in the context of a standard
commercial voice-based dialogue system.
The system consists of several modules: Dialogue Engine (DE), Automatic Speech
Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech synthesizer (TTS), Communication module (COM-Modul),
Audio Manager, Game-Client and Game-Server, all connected and communicating with each
other.
The D-Box project will use three EU languages: English, German and French.
The goals of D-Box are challenging and full of application potential. Research is
conducted by a consortium of leading edge experts in the different fields, strongly
committed to the project.
Partners
Acapela Group (http://www.acapela-group.com)
IDIAP (http://www.idiap.ch)
Koemei (https://www.koemei.com)
M'Pu'Mi (http://www.mipumi.com)
Saarland University (http://www.uni-saarland.de)
Sikom (http://www.sikom.de)
About Acapela Group:
We invent speech solutions to vocalize any written content with authentic and original
voices that express meaning and intent. Over 100 synthetic voices in 30 languages are
ready to give a voice to any content producing a natural and pleasant audio result, by
turning written input into speech. We can create the voice your company needs. Just for
you. This is Acapela bespoke expertise. Let's talk! http://www.acapela-group.com
Acapela Group
CONTACT: Caroline Houel, Telephone number : +33562247104, E-mail : caroline.houel@acapela-group.com
Multilingual User Gaming Interaction: Let's Talk About D-Box
MONS, Belgium, January 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
Imagine a game between several users, speaking different languages and interfacing
using the same voice. At Acapela Group, we are working on it.
Imagine a game between several users, speaking different languages. And imagine them
playing without caring about language barriers, because the interface is taking care of
that. Then imagine that they all hear the ongoing conversation with the same voice, but
each in his or her own language. Because the same voice speaks several languages. We are
talking about Multilingual User Gaming Interaction, the aim of the D-Box project.
D-Box's main goal is to develop and test an innovative architecture for conversational
agents whose purpose is to support multilingual collaboration between users on a common
problem in an interactive application.
The interactive agent will enable typewritten and/or spoken collaboration in the
users' native language by mediating communication; all user interactions will be
transmitted through the D-Box multilingual agent which will (1) manage and support
dialogic interactions based on its understanding of the users' shared goals, and (2)
process, extract, and transfer knowledge among users. The agent will have no translation
capabilities, but will instead have access to rich linguistic resources in multiple
languages and domain-and application-specific knowledge bases.
The project is funded by EUREKA (http://www.eurekanetwork.org ), the Pan-European
research and development funding and coordination organization. The project leader is
Mi'pu'mi Games GmbH and the project partners are Acapela Group, Idiap Research Institute,
Koemei SA, Sikom Software GmbH and Universitat des Saarlandes.
'Gaming has not yet entered the speech dimension and the D-Box project is a great
opportunity to introduce real conversational capabilities to new games in the very near
future. We are looking forward to seeing and hearing developers design their games with
conversation at the heart of their game architecture. We are very enthusiastic about being
part of this project, about contributing our expertise and about working with such
prestigious partners,' comments Lars-Erik Larsson, CEO of Acapela Group.
From a research point of view, the project requires building a multilingual
conversational agent which will seamlessly interact with multiple users speaking different
languages and driven by a common goal defined by the game. This involves the development
and integration of multilingual speech recognition systems, multilingual speech synthesis,
multilingual dialogue modelling, and cross-domain adaptation resources.
From an integration and evaluation point of view the project's key innovative idea is
that the overall anticipated framework will be application-agnostic.
D-Box is concerned with addressing scalability, a common problem with today's
interactive conversational systems, through the development of a conversational agent that
is cheaply and easily portable across languages and adaptable to different domains and
environments. In order to ensure portability, the framework developed in the context of a
game scenario will be in parallel evaluated and tested in the context of a standard
commercial voice-based dialogue system.
The system consists of several modules: Dialogue Engine (DE), Automatic Speech
Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech synthesizer (TTS), Communication module (COM-Modul),
Audio Manager, Game-Client and Game-Server, all connected and communicating with each
other.
The D-Box project will use three EU languages: English, German and French.
The goals of D-Box are challenging and full of application potential. Research is
conducted by a consortium of leading edge experts in the different fields, strongly
committed to the project.
Partners
Acapela Group (http://www.acapela-group.com)
IDIAP (http://www.idiap.ch)
Koemei (https://www.koemei.com)
M'Pu'Mi (http://www.mipumi.com)
Saarland University (http://www.uni-saarland.de)
Sikom (http://www.sikom.de)
About Acapela Group:
We invent speech solutions to vocalize any written content with authentic and original
voices that express meaning and intent. Over 100 synthetic voices in 30 languages are
ready to give a voice to any content producing a natural and pleasant audio result, by
turning written input into speech. We can create the voice your company needs. Just for
you. This is Acapela bespoke expertise. Let's talk! http://www.acapela-group.com
Acapela Group
CONTACT: Caroline Houel, Telephone number : +33562247104, E-mail : caroline.houel@acapela-group.com