As penance, he is developing the - a large scale Java-based graphical mentoring system.

He has been known to wear shoes. He is also forced to beat many research students to get them to work. Madness reigns.

Simon Beard www: http://www.metaface.computing.edu.au email: beardsw@cs.curtin.edu.au tel: +61.8.92667680 fax: +61.8.92662819

His research draws upon areas such as:

• Metaphors and HCI.
• Chatterbots, interface agents and talking heads.
• Search engines, vortals, and portals.
• Technologies and standards such as XML and MPEG-7.

MetaFace is a combination of many existing technologies designed to bring a new metaphor and metaphor-enabling framework to the Internet. The aim is to reduce complexity and make finding information easier, as interaction is based on anthropomorphic (human-like) concepts.
 
 

John Stallo www:http://www.computing.edu.au/~stalloj email: stalloj@cs.curtin.edu.au

John Stallo graduated in 2000 as a First Class Honours student in the Department of Computing, at Curtin University of Technology. He is interested in simulating the effects of emotion on speech for the Text-to-Speech module of a Talking Head. A significant portion of the project involves implementing an XML-based speech markup language. The markup language will have low-level tags to control speech parameters such as pitch, rate, emphasis etc. The simulation of a particular emotion will be specified via higher level tags.

The main aims of the project were:

1. To develop a system that can add simulated emotion effects to synthetic speech. This involves researching the speech correlates of emotion that have been identified in the literature. The findings will be applied to the control parameters available in a speech synthesizer, allowing a specified emotion to be simulated using rules controlling the parameters.
2. To integrate the system within the text-to-speech module of the Talking Head being developed as part of the Interface project.

Project Quick-Links:

• Main Honours Project Page
• Honours Project Proposal
• Speech Samples
• via Interface site
• via my Homepage

Quoc Hung Huynh www:http://www.computing.edu.au/~huynhqh email: huynhqh@cs.curtin.edu.au

The above sited project is to be supervised by Andrew Marriott, and will involve the investigation of a virtual news presenter (VNP) package to allow an animated floating head to present information supplied from multiple sources, such as text files in a typical news presenter manner. The VNP package will allow the output of video data such that it can be either pre-recorded or displayed live onto existing broadcasting hardware. The VNP package is to be developed in conjunction with the school of vision and learning and channel 31 broadcasting. It is foreseen that the VNP package will provide the mechanism for channel 31 broadcasting to present factual information on their broadcasting network in a unique and innovative manner.

The project will involve the investigation of current facial animation technology and text to speech synthesis (TTSS), including the current work developed by the Computer Animation Negus (CAN), specifically the talking faqbot application. This project will work in conjunction with other similar projects dealing with facial animation. Typically, the supplementary projects will look at increasing the quality of TTSS, quicker rendering time and the addition of a synthetic character persona.