Research Challenges and Opportunities in Mobile Applications

Following the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, especially smart phones, both server-based and embedded speech and multimodal applications started to emerge.

These range from simpler applications where speech recognition is followed by a known task such as voice search or messaging, to more complex systems such as speech-to-speech translation, educational applications, or personal assistants. With the advances in client side capabilities coming with larger screens that enable multitouch displays, these applications have begun to move beyond conventional speech applications towards three orthogonal dimensions: multimodality, personalization, and continuous and ubiquitous situation awareness.

What are the technical challenges and research needed for mobile multimodal applications? You can find answers in the DSP EDUCATION column article of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (July 2011). This article especially focuses on educational aspects and research problems and points out issues and opportunities for students in this area. It explore challenges, possibilities, and approaches for enabling speech processing, as well as convenient and effective speech and multimodal user interfaces for mobile environments.