Projects

(Last Modified: Thursday, 17 April 2003)

Here are brief descriptions and relevant links for some of the projects I was involved in before my PhD project:

• Research Programming:
  • Coral
  • KELP
  • Kiosk
  
  
• Teaching Assistance:
  • Object-Oriented Technologies (ITEC802 - 2003, Term 1)
  • XML Technologies for E-Commerce (TECH854 - 2002, Term 2)
  • Automatic Marking System (AMS) [COMP248 - 2001, Term 2: An Introduction to NLP]
  
  
• Miscellaneous:
  • Web interface for demos of applications in Language Technology

Coral

(Project's home page)

This project is concerned with automatic generation of route description. It aims to generate automatically a text in plain natural language that describes step by step how to go from A to B.

Our current work is concerned with the development of a route description system that uses the same underlying Geographical Information System (GIS) datasets as the commercially available web-based systems, but which incorporates techniques from Natural Language Generation (NLG) research to produce more natural-sounding descriptions.
The current version of our application is applied to a street network for the Sydney area, Australia.

Another interesting aspect of this project is to produce one route description that can be rendered via a variety of devices, like handled device, kiosk, on-board navigation system, mobile phone, and so on. To support this variety of outputs, we have defined an intermediate, device-independent representation as a markup language called RPML (for Route Planning Markup Language).

KELP

(Project's home page)

This project is concerned with Knowledge Extraction and Linguistic Presentation. The goal is to develop a system that demonstrates different cutting-edge language technologies. It aims to provide the user a toolset for online knowledge extraction and synthesis, using a natural language interface via both speech and text. It involves different techniques in natural language analysis and generation, user modelling, knowledge representation, and spoken language dialogue systems.

I was more particularly involved in the development of a prototype in Java.

Kiosk

This project has 3 main objectives: to specify an Ontology for the University and to implement the corresponding XML format; to serve as an exhibition platform to demonstrate a variety of Language Technology related applications; and, of course, to provide students and visitors an easy-to-access source of information about the department.

A first prototype is currently accessible in the department of Computing (building E6A, on the 3^rd floor) from the information kiosk installed nearby the tea-room. It was implemented using XML and XSL Transformation.

Among the future possible extensions one can mention an intelligent agent interface, a speech interface (proposed as a 2002 Honours project), the possibility to synchronise a Palm Pilot with data like timetables, contact details, or route description on the campus.