EU - Euresearch ROCKIT Workshop

Workshop on Multilingual & Multimodal Interaction: An EU Roadmap Euresearch

Bern (Switzerland), 2016 Wednesday Sept. 2, 13:30-17:00

 

PROGRAM & VENUE

Program

  
13:30-13:45
Registration & Welcoming
13:45-14:00 Euresearch welcoming
  Dr. Stefan Fischer, Euresearch National Contact Point, CH
14:00-14:30 General Presentation + Q&A
  Prof. Steve Renals, ROCKIT Coordinator, University of Edinburgh, UK
14:30-15:00 R&D Scenarios + Q&A
  Prof. Hervé Bourlard, Rockit Swiss Partner, Idiap Research Institute, CH
15:00-15:30
Coffee Break
15:30-16:00 Verticals & Use Cases + Q&A
  Dr. Andrew Joscelyne, Senior Advisor, LT-Innovate, BE
16:00-16:45 Panel discussion
16:45-17:00
Conclusion

 

CONTEXT

The Idiap Research Institute is one of the key partners of the EU ROCKIT Coordination and Support Action (CSA) aiming at developing a research and technology transfer roadmap in multilingual and multimodal interaction, with a major emphasis towards increasing the innovation potential in industry, and SMEs in particular.

ROCKIT is concerned with the development of proactive, multimodal, social, and autonomous agents to enable rich, conversational interactions between people and between people and machines. Such agents should feature:

  • Natural communication and interaction
  • Proactive and autonomous behavior
  • Social norms corresponding to the current environment
  • Awareness of the current context
  • A capability for social and affective behavio

Over the last 15 months, and based on more than 1,000 inputs collected from stakeholders from research and industry, ROCKIT has developed a first version of a research and innovation roadmap, mainly focusing on:

  1. Societal drivers: mainly illustrated through 5 generic scenarios (adaptable interfaces for all, smart personal assistants, active access to unstructured information, communicative robots, and shared collaboration and creativity)
  2. Trends of enabling technologies: what is available or to be developed, and when?
  3. Vertical markets: including tourism, health, manufacturing, security, collaboration support, etc.

The current version of the roadmap (well supported by the EC) is accessible from CITIA or via any of the following link:

OBJECTIVE AND FORMAT OF THE WORKSHOP

The workshop will focus on the Research and Innovation Roadmap prepared by the EU ROCKIT project and the Conversational Interaction Technologies Innovation Alliances (CITIA), as developed through multiple EU-level workshops and initiatives (the next one being in Brussels, at the LT-Innovate Summit, June 25-26, 2015).

Before the end of this year, ROCKIT also aims at consolidating its findings and roadmap through national consultations, motivating the present workshop.

The main goal of the proposed workshop, organized in collaboration with Euresearch, will be focused on a quick presentation of the current version of the roadmap, followed by moderated discussions and collection of feedback and recommendations on (1) refining the CITIA research & innovation scenarios; (2) mechanisms to bridge the gap between research & innovation; (3) further development of the CITIA stakeholder community; and (4) how to develop a startup culture to bridge the gap between the excellent research base and commercial reality.
A few ROCKIT representatives will drive the workshop, at least including:

  • Philippe Waker, LT-Innovate Director, Brussels
  • Andrew Joselyne, E-unlimited, Brussels

The workshop will kick off a few short presentations (30 min max) presenting the current version of the ROCKIT roadmap, scenarios, user cases, technology requirements, etc.

Discussion will then be stimulated by some invited 2-minute interventions from representatives across the stakeholder community. The session will then continue with 20-25 minutes of open discussion focused on developing an action plan, followed by 5-10 minutes for wrap-up and next steps. We shall capture the discussion through audio recording and through note-taking by members of the ROCKIT project.

The outcome of the workshop will be refinement to and comments on the action plan to move forward the ROCKIT roadmap. In particular the aim will be to develop research and innovation targets (e.g. vertical market sectors), together with a plan to achieve this.

 

WHO SHOULD ATTEND THE WORKSHOP?

We are addressing a range of stakeholders, including:

  • Industry, especially SMEs
  • Researchers, from universities and research institutes
  • Investors and venture capital
  • EC representatives, especially from Data Value Chain, Creativity, Converged Media
  • Other policy makers


Using the stakeholder networks developed by the ROCKIT partners, and exploiting the Euresearch SME network, we shall communicate with stakeholders via email, personal contact, social media (including Twitter, LinkedIn), and through targeted communication with relevant national and international projects and industry

For more information