A CITRIS Research Exchange Seminar with speaker Dr. Ahmed Sabbir Arif
TALK TITLE: “What if Computers Could Read Our Lips? Silent Speech as an Active Mode of Interaction with Computer Systems”
SPEAKER: Dr. Ahmed Sabbir Arif, Assistant Professor Computer Science and Engineering, UC Merced
BIO: Dr. Ahmed Sabbir Arif leads the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the University of California, Merced. His research makes computer systems accessible to a wider range of users by developing intuitive and effective input and interaction techniques. A major thread of his work focuses on smarter solutions for text entry. His other interests include mobile interaction, accessibility, and applied machine learning. He has received a Hellman Fellowship, three Michael A. J. Sweeney Awards, and a CHISIG Gitte Lindgaard Award for his research activities. Before joining UC Merced, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ryerson University and an NSERC ENGAGE Fellow at York University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from York University. He also holds an M.Sc. from Lakehead University and a B.Sc. from Trent University, both in Computer Science.
ABSTRACT: Silent speech that converts lip movements into text can mitigate many challenges of speech and traditional input methods. Yet, existing silent speech recognition models are error-prone or use impractical extremal devices or implants. In this talk, I will present the findings of three projects involving silent speech input. First, a social study established silent speech as an acceptable and desired mode of interaction. Second, two empirical studies revealed that users are more tolerant of errors in silent speech and tend to speak slowly when interacting with it. Third, a new end-to-end deep neural network that can automatically segment lip sequence videos and classify them into text. In an evaluation, the model reduced the word error rate by 57% compared to the state-of-the-arts without compromising the overall computation time.
ABOUT THE SERIES: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry, and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, this series highlights leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Each seminar takes place on Wednesdays from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm PT. Have a suggestion for a great speaker? Please use this form to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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