Human-Computer Communications Laboratory

Overview

The Human-Computer Communications Laboratory (HCCL) is established in the Department of SEEM. As computers become proliferous and connectivity widespread, we are increasingly able to access computer power, data, information and knowledge from anywhere and at anytime. However, in order to bring the benefits of such accessible intelligence to the masses, we should not neglect the ongoing evolutions and revolutions in human-computer communications. Indeed, as the human factors of information systems and knowledge systems emerge as a research area in and of itself, it is timely for our Department to embark on this exciting field of study. The mission of the Human-Computer Communications Laboratory is to foster interdisciplinary research and education in user-centered computer systems. The scope of HCCL includes the study of how interactive and intelligent human-computer interfaces should be designed and implemented, in order to effectively enable users to accomplish their desired tasks.

Research

Guided by our mission, HCCL is intended to support research areas including but not limited to: speech recognition, spoken language understanding, speech generation, conversational systems development, audio information processing, multimodal and multimedia interface development, intelligent agents, mobile computing, and computer-supported collaborative work.

Systems and Demos

  HCCL's CU FOREX system -- Live Demonstration!
http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/hccl/demos/cu_forex
CU FOREX is a bilingual conversational hotline for foreign exchange enquiries. You can try talking your way to our real-time Reuters satellite feed!

  HCCL's Natural Language Interface
http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/hccl/demos/travel
This is a natural language interface to demonstrate language understanding of Air Travel Information Queries

  HCCL's Speech Generation System
http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~spgen99
Listen to our speech generation for Putonghua and Cantonese! It speaks out the most uptodate foreign exchange rates!

  Trilingual Audio Search Engine
http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~ase99
ASE is a multilingual audio search engine on the web that supports Cantonese, English and Putonghua speech retrieval. Users can use a textual query to retrieve audio and video documents.

  Semantic Processing
http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~semproc99
The semantic processing system can perform bilingual natural language understanding(NLU) for user queries in the financial domain. It uses a unified approach to handle both English and Chinese natural language queries.
The system's intelligence can derive complete interpretations of queries. It can automatically retrieve real-time stock quote from REUTERS. The system can be integrated with speech recognition and synthesis technologies.

Publications

  Full List of Publications

Resources

  High-end PCs and Workstations
  Audio Equipment
  Quiet, recording room
  Special-purpose software tools

People

  Prof. Helen Meng (Lab Coordinator)
  Prof. Lam Wai