Talking heads

My colleagues and I are developing a system that emulates these popular everyday communication styles. Through the UCI's (University of California at Irvine) Technology Outreach Program, this project is producing a system that not only observes and listens to the talking head of the operator, but also provides a talking head on-screen for the user to hear and watch. Our project specifically uses multimedia to address an immediate and practical goal-better speech recognition. Although implementing “natural” multimedia is a key goal of this project, comfortable use in itself is important, even if only as a motivating or marketing attribute. However, where increased efficiency does not result from using more natural and comfortable procedures, the situation may still improve if the computer begins to act more like a human team-mate