Speech recognition and speaker recognition by machine are crucial ingredients for many important applications such as natural and flexible human-machine interfaces. Most developments in speech-based automatic recognition have relied on acoustic speech as the sole input signal, disregarding its visual counterpart. However, recognition based on acoustic speech alone can be afflicted with deficiencies that preclude its use in many real-world applications, particularly under adverse conditions. The combination of auditory and visual modalities promises higher recognition accuracy and robustness than can be obtained with a single modality. Multimodal recognition is therefore acknowledged as a vital component of the next generation of spoken language systems. This paper reviews the components of bimodal recognizers, discusses the accuracy of bimodal recognition, and highlights some outstanding research issues as well as possible application domains.

This is a repository copy of Efficient object localization using sparsely distributed passive RFID tags.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges faced by West Midlands (UK) information communications technology (ICT)-oriented small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in adopting and coping with the speed of fast-changing technologies. Design/methodology/approach -A total of 73 company managers (most of them are owners) were interviewed in various sub-regions of West Midlands. Among the companies, 81 per cent of SMEs opted for face-to-face interview, while 19 per cent opted for a telephone interview. Findings -Several factors that affect the speed of adopting new technology were identified, ranging from SME owner or manager level of education, lack of strategy and perceived benefits in adopting new technologies, to ICT investment, involvement in research, innovation and research and development.Research limitations/implications -The study focused on the ICT-oriented businesses in general. ICT is a wide area and so there is a need to test each type of ICT and see how other factors like geographical location affect the business. Also, it would have been interesting to have large number of medium-sized businesses involved in the survey. Practical implications -The identified factors need to be addressed if sustainable ICT adoption within the ICT-oriented SMEs in the region is to be achieved. The research provides a basis for the establishment of future projects that will embed these factors. Originality/value -This is the first study that uses a large data sample collected through face-to-face interviews to present the challenges faced by the ICT-oriented businesses in West Midlands in adopting new technologies. The study suggests means to achieve a successful and sustainable technology adoption for ICT-oriented SMEs in the region.

We present a new approach for the recognition of facial expressions from video sequences in the presence of occlusion. Although promising results have been reported in the literature on automatic recognition of facial expressions, most techniques have been assessed using experiments performed in controlled laboratory conditions which do not reflect real-world conditions. The goal of the work presented herein, is to develop recognition techniques that will overcome some limitations of current techniques, such as their sensitivity to partial occlusion of the face. The proposed approach is based on a localised representation of facial features, and on data fusion. The experiments show that the proposed approach is robust to partial occlusion of the face.

We present a robust technique for tracking a set of predetermined points on a human face. To achieve robustness, the Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi point tracker is extended and specialised to work on facial features by embedding knowledge about the configuration and visual characteristics of the face. The resulting tracker is designed to recover from the loss of points caused by tracking drift or temporary occlusion. Performance assessment experiments have been carried out on a set of 30 video sequences of several facial expressions. It is shown that using the original Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi tracker, some of the points are lost, whereas using the new method described in this paper, all lost points are recovered with no or little displacement error.