1. Informatics and Telematics Institute Centre for Research and Technology Hellas
Founded 1998
3 Meuro/year funding
12 FP6 and 20 FP5 IST projects
60 Employes
Over 200 publications the last 5 years
Equipment: 75 PCs, 7 Servers, VR room, Digital Media Room

2. Research Areas Image and Video Coding Computer Vision Virtual Reality
Digital Media Technology
Internet Application & Services
E-learning & E-commerce
Communication Networks & Infrastuctures

3. Proposal Title : Automatic Cued Speech Interfaces for Communication with Hearing Impaired People Proposal Acronym : CURE
Problem : Hearing-impaired people orally educated use lip reading to perceive speech. But speech is not completely clear from lips: several speech units have similar lip shapes. Cued Speech was developed to complement lip reading with the help of a set of handshapes placed at specific locations on one side of the speaker face. Thus the reception of the combination of hand and lip information makes speech clear.
Proposer : Informatics and Telematics Institute / CERTH, Thessaloniki, Greece
Contact Person : Dimitrios Tzovaras, Senior Researcher C’,
Tel:
Deadline for new partner search : Friday 6/5/2005

4. CURE
Goal : To develop automatic translation tools from Cued Speech gestures towards auditory speech and from auditory speech towards Cued Speech.
Tools : Lip tracking, facial expression estimation, hand gesture recognition, head posture recognition, non-verbal communication signs recognition, lip motion and hand gesture synthesis in real time.
Applications : Telephony, advanced human-computer interfaces for the deaf, TV interface for the deaf (via avatars), avatar agents supporting cued speech as a plugin for browing web pages, etc.
Consortium : CERTH (Thessaloniki, Greece), INPG (groups ICP, LIS, CLIPS, Grenoble, France), France Telecom R&D.
Partners needed : a) User organisations, b) new technology partners are welcome depending on expertise.
Proposer : Informatics and Telematics Institute / CERTH, Thessaloniki, Greece
Contact Person : Dimitrios Tzovaras, Senior Researcher C’,
Tel:
Deadline for new partner search : Friday 6/5/2005

5. CURE as a sub-project of an IP proposal
We are interested to integrate CURE to a larger IP targeting :
Demonstration of accessibility to mainstream technologies
Educational environments for children
Work environments for people with disabilities
Next generation mobiles
Digital TV
CURE can be seen as a vertical activity (cued speech technology for the deaf) to demonstrate accessibility to mainstream technologies.
Proposer : Informatics and Telematics Institute / CERTH, Thessaloniki, Greece
Contact Person : Dimitrios Tzovaras, Senior Researcher C’,
Tel:
Deadline for new partner search : Friday 6/5/2005