|
Sidan är under uppdatering. Essay Project ProposalsThemes: Security, protocols and systems, database systems, programming languages, language technology, artificial intelligence, algorithms, computer graphics, simulation, speech and music SecurityTitle: Mix-net based on problems hard to solve by quantum computers Theme: Cryptography / Algorithms Subject: If quantum computers are ever built, then they will break factoring, the RSA problem, and the discrete logarithm problem efficiently (in low-degree polynomial time). Many electronic voting systems use a so-called mix-net, and almost all proposed mix-nets depend crucially on properties only found in cryptosystems that are based on the mentioned hardness assumptions. Recently we published a paper at Asiacrypt 2012 where a protocol based on any CCA2 secure cryptosystem is used. Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Douglas Wikström Title: Comparison of exponentiation methods Theme: Cryptography / Algorithms Subject: The efficiency of modular exponentiation modulo a prime (or on an elliptic curve) can in some cases be greatly improved by using various forms of pre-computation and exponent re-coding to some non-adjacent form (NAF). Such techniques are used in various cryptographic libraries and products, e.g., OpenSSL. Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Douglas Wikström Title: Code voting Theme: Cryptography / Electronic voting Subject: Code voting can be used to allow a voter to vote from an untrusted computer. The voter is provided with random personalized codes for the candidates that can only jointly be computed by a group of servers. The codes do not reveal any information about the candidates. To submit its vote the voter asks its browser to encrypt a candidate name. The browser then hands the ciphertext to the servers which computes the return code and sends it using an independent channel to the voter, e.g., using SMS to the mobile phone of the voter. Finally, the voter checks that the correct code was received to check that its choice was encrypted correctly. Several schemes have been proposed and the real world system used in Norway recently uses a variant of this technique. Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Douglas Wikström Title: Provably secure pseudo-random generators Theme: Cryptography / Algorithms Subject: Pseudo-random generators are used in cryptography and security to expand a short truly random string into a longer random string that appears to be random to any computationally bounded algorithm. Possible essay projects:
Example references (there is a lot of liberty):
Supervisor: Douglas Wikström Title: Cryptosystems provably secure against chosen ciphertext attacks Theme: Cryptography / Algorithms Subject: Unless used in particular applications, cryptosystems must be secure against so called chosen-ciphertext attacks (CCA). Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Douglas Wikström Title: Proof of work Theme: Security Subject: One way to try to avoid DOS attacks,
brute force attacks or having someone use a mail server for mass email
(SPAM) is to use a proof of work
protocol. Essentially it involves the server not processing a client
request right away. Instead it sends a Study, present and implement a proof of work protocol. Explain assumptions and examine performance. References:
Supervisor: Per Austrin, Douglas Wikström Title: Secure multiparty computation Theme: Security Subject: In the design of secure cryptographic protocols, one important aspect is to define what it would mean for the protocol to be secure — without a definition of security, it is of course impossible to prove that a protocol is secure. The notion of an ideal functionality can be intuitively described by an example. Consider the fallowing sealed bid auction: There is a trusted person to whom all others can send a bid over a secure channel. Once the auction is over the winner is the one who handed in the highest bid, and that person pays the value of the second highest bid. The trusted person announces the winner and the value of the second highest bid amd the bidders do not learn anything else about the other bids. This would be our ideal functionality. Now, let us say that we want to remove the trusted person and instead use cryptography. We then want to prove that the cryptographic protocol behaves the same as the ideal functionality, i.e., that (for all practical purposes) the outcome is the same and the information leaked to the participants is the same. There are a number of frameworks available for implementing secure multiplarty computation. Use one or two to implement some simple examples. Document your examples and the properties of the framework(s). If you look at more than one, then do a comparison on e.g., usability and efficiency. References: Some frameworks Supervisor: Douglas Wikström Biological Modelling AlgorithmsTitle: Brain signal pattern recognition Theme: Algorithms Subject:Pattern recognition and machine learning have significantly advanced the field of biological data analysis leading in consequence to the development of effective diagnostic tools and supporting research efforts. The contribution of novel pattern recognition methods has been particularly appreciated in brain data mining as this new approach allows for exploratory search for spatio-temporal patterns in large quantities of high-dimensional nonstationary recordings of brain activity.The emerging trend is to combine machine learning techniques with brain-inspired computing algorithms to address increasingly demanding objectives of brain signal analysis in novel applications. Below you can find a set of alternative projects (they can be treated individually or in combination). Possible essay projects:
Supervisor: Pawel Herman Title: Inference about simulated neural systems from spiking data Theme: Algorithms / Simulations Subject: The proliferation of neural modelling studies along with rapidly expanding dimensions of microscopic and mesoscopic recordings of neuronal activities in the brain have not been matched yet with effective algorithms for their processing. It is particularly insightful to study so-called spiking dynamics exhibited by individual cells as it provides direct evidence about functional and structural aspects of the information about the underlying neural circuits. The problem amounts to parallel processing of high-dimensional nonstationary point processes and designing a model for inference about various characteristics of the neural source (system) of interest. The methods investigated in the project will be evaluated on the existing data sets generated in neural simulations. Below you can find a set of alternative projects (they can be treated individually or in combination). Possible essay projects:
Supervisor: Pawel Herman Title: Optimisation and parameter search in computational modelling Theme: Algorithms Subject: Model's parameters have a decisive effect on its behaviour and dynamics. Search for parameters is at the same time the most tedious component of computational modelling. Neural simulations are no exception. On the contrary since they account for nonlinear and stochastic effects in brain data, parameters need to be carefully tuned to obtain a desirable functional and/or dynamical outcome. This optimisation procedure is commonly carried out manually on a trial-and-error basis. It is thus desirable to automatise this tedious process by providing an effective parameter search and optimisation scheme. One of key challenges to address is computational efficiency of the implemented method and the definition of a cost function based on the existing "manual" evaluation criteria. Tests in the project will be perfomed with the use of existing neural models or a low-scale simulation demo will be developed. Possible essay projects:
Supervisor: Pawel Herman Language TechnologyTitle: Data-driven learning of the meaning of route descriptions Theme: Language Technology Subject: In one of our research projects, we are investigating how the computer should be able follow a route description in natural language, given a map. The typical approach to solve this using natural language processing would be to write a grammar with semantics that is used to parse the text and then use the resulting semantics to follow the route. The problem with that approach is that it is hard to anticipate all possible ways of describing routes and that it may be hard to define a suitable semantic formalism for routes. An interesting alternative would be to let the computer train route understanding models from data where subjects are asked to describe routes, without any (or with very few) assumptions about the language. Possible essay projects: In our research project, we have collected data of subjects describing routes while following the route with the mouse on a map. Using a machine learning algorithm, you could develop a data-driven model that can be used to take a route description (in text) as input and draw the route on the map. References: Supervisor: Gabriel Skantze Title: Chatbot using common sense knowledge Theme: Language Technology Subject: A chatbot is a computer program that can engage in a (written) chat with a user. One of the earliest examples is ELIZA, a simulated Rogerian psychotherapist implemented by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1964. Today, the technology is used in commercial applications for customer support on websites, developed by companies such as Artificial Solutions. Every year, the Loebner Price is awarded to the most human-like chatbot. Simple chatbots (such as ELIZA) only use predefined scripts that recognizes some keywords in the user input and then say something using this keyword. For example: "I have a problem with my mother" -> "Tell me more about your mother". It should be possible to improve this behavior by using available online resources. One such resource is "common sense" databases which encode everyday knowledge (which computers are typically not very good at). For example, the freely available Open Mind database contains over 1 million statements in English that encode this kind of knowledge. Possible essay projects: Use a common sense database to implement a chatbot that can produce a convincing dialogue behavior. How could this be measured? References: Supervisor: Gabriel Skantze Title: Poetry Writing Assistant Theme: Language Technology Subject: Traditional poetry (and song lyrics) has to conform to a number of constraints when it comes to rhyme, stress and syllables. For some conventional forms, such as a Limerick or a Sonnet, these constraints are very specific. Using a pronunciation lexicon it should be possible to check a given poem whether it confirms to these constraints and which parts are incorrect (much like the spelling correction in word). Using a language model (trained on general newspaper texts or a large set of poems extracted from the web), it should also be possible to suggest words or even complete phrases to the writer that conforms to the constraints given by the chosen poem form and the parts written so far. Possible essay projects: Implement a Poetry Writing Assistant and explore different ways of assisting the writer along the lines outlined above. If it is not possible to meet all constraints in some part of the poem, is it possible to loosen up some of them? How should this be done? A pronunciation lexicon can be provided by the supervisor. Supervisor: Gabriel Skantze Artificial IntelligenceTitle: Hive Theme: AI / Game theory Subject: Hive is a simple board game played with a few hexagon-shaped pieces. Construct and analyze a few different strategies for playing Hive. The strategies should be implemented and it should be possible to compare them against each other and against a human player. References:
Supervisor: Per Austrin Title: Automatic twitter response generator Theme: Natural Language Processing & AI Subject: Social networks like Facebook, blogs and Twitter are popular communication tools that generate enormous amounts of data every day. These texts are rich sources of information that can be extracted using different techniques from Natural Language Processing (NLP) which in turn opens up for new and interesting applications. One such application is to build a "chatbot" or ´response generator¡ that extract information from these resources and use these to automatically respond to user's input. One challenge when building such a system is to build a system that responds in similar way as a human user would respond. Building a machine with the ability to exhibit human-like intelligent behavior has been a long standing challenge within Artificial Intelligence (i.e. the famous Turing test). Possible essay project: Build and develop an automatic twitter respond generator that produces responses to twitter feeds. One possibility is to build two different generators, one based on simple string matching techniques (e.g. dynamic programming) and one system that is a little bit more sophisticated (using for example language modeling and/or POS tagging) and compare these two by putting them up to a Turing test, i.e. asking subjects to judge whether it was a human or a machine that generated the response. References: Supervisor: Anna Hjalmarsson Title: 'Sims' for Pedestrian Behavior Theme: Artificial intelligence Subject: We are all familiar with the game, 'The Sims'. In this thesis you will explore building a simulation of a pedestrian walking around Stockholm. You will be given a spatial database that has buildings, streets, museums, etc. (obtained from OpenStreetsMaps). The pedestrian will have a mental model of what they are interested in, what they know about the city, etc. This will result in the simulated pedestrian embarking on a tour around the city. You will build a more or less complicated simulator using whatever algorithm you wish. Now what can you say about the resulting behavior? Is it human like or not? Is it possible for you to generate walking paths that are indistinguishable from real human walking paths? If you instantiate your simulator under two alternative parameter settings, how could you determine that one parameter setting produced more 'human like' behavior than the other. What are the wider implications for AI research if we succeed in generating convincing simulated behavior? Supervisor: Petter Ögren AlgorithmsTitle: Energy-efficient algorithms Theme: Algorithms Subject: In recent years, motivated by rising electricity prices and consumption, people have started to look at energy usage as a resource in computation (similarly to time and memory usage). Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Per Austrin Title: Voting paradoxes Theme: Theoretical computer science Subject: In the most recent Swedish elections, a "paradox" occurred: some parties did not get a number of seats proportional to the number of votes they received. Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Per Austrin Title: Asymmetric travelling sales person Theme: Algorithms Subject: In the normal, symmetric, version of the travelling sales person problem disances are symmetric, that is, for two cities i, j the distance from i to j is the same as the distance from j to i. However in practice that may not hold. For instance in a city where some streets are one way, the distances may not be symetric. Much less is known about how to find good tours for the asymmetric case. Study this problem, examine available algorithms, implement a few and compare them on reasonable-size examples. You will need to make reasonably efficient implementations. Supervisor: Petter Ögren, Per Austrin, Vahid Mosavat Title: Optimal Yatzee Theme: Algorithms Subject: Construct a program that plays Yatzee well, preferably optimally. The program should, given the current result and the current values of the dice, determine which dice to save or, if all three throws have been used in this round, determine where to put the score. There are several variations of this problem. The simplest one is to always maximize the expected points you will get, and a probably more difficult one is to, given both your own and an opponents current score, maximize the likelyhood of winning, provided the opponent also aims to win. There are also variations depending on the exact rules used. Supervisor: Per Austrin, Vahid Mosavat Title: Clustering Theme: Algorithms Subject: Investigate use of different clustering algorithms for classification on relatively large data sets. Possible uses include recognition of hand written characters and classification of articles. References:
Supervisor: Per Austrin Title: Sudoko solvers Theme: Algorithms Subject: In principle Sudoku can be solved using a brute-force algorithm but it is more interesting to find an efficient sudoku solver. The task is to study and implement som sudoku solving algorithms, and hopefully to design your own solution or variation. The algorithms should be tested and bench marked against sudoku instances of varying difficulty. Supervisor: Vahid Mosavat Title: Rubik's cube Theme: Algorithms Subject: Implement and compare different solution methods for Rubik's cube. If the 3x3 cube is already too investigated by other authors, how about looking at the 5x5 cube, or other variants (such as the triangular "cube")? A solution would require an efficient way of representing states of the cube, as well as the possible state transformations.Supervisor: Johan Boye Title: Preference modelling Theme: Algorithms Subject: A preference model predicts what a person would choose in a particular situation, for instance what film he would prefer to see from a list of 10 films. Such preference models can be automatically learned by studying what the person has chosen in earlier similar situations. Implement one or several algorithms for learning preference models, and evaluate them empirically. This task involves selecting a suitable problem (in which a person can choose among a set of possible options), and finding a suitable representation of the options.Supervisor: Johan Boye Title: Elevator control strategies Theme: Algorithms Subject: A program controlling an elevator has to repeatedly decide which floor to go to, based on the requests of people inside the elevator, and the requests of people on different floors pressing the elevator button. Implement an elevator simulator and compare the performance of a number of elevator control strategies. An interesting twist to the problem is to implement a program that learns and improves its strategy through reinforcement learning.Supervisor: Johan Boye VisualisationTitle: Particle systems and flock behaviours Theme: Computer graphics / Simulations Subject: Particle systems are based on modelling and visualisation of a larger or smaller set of particles and can be applied to create images of e.g. fireworks, smoke and water cascades. Similar techniques can also be used to model the behaviour of flocks, of for examples birds, that are given specific characteristics in order to keep together, avoid collisions, etc. Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Petter Ögren Title: Tele-presence using Kinect and an animated robotic face Theme: Speech Technology / Computer Vision Subject: Tele-presence allows a person to take part in an interaction with another person without being physically present. A simple example is a video skype call, while a more futuristic scenario could be one where a person (A) is sitting in front of a computer talking to another person (B) sitting in another place. Person B is in turn talking to a robot which replicates the behavior of person A, while everything that person B says and does is played back on person A's computer. Possible essay projects: Implement a program that uses Microsoft Kinect to capture a user's facial expressions and replicates these expressions in an animated face that can be back-projected in the robot head Furhat, developed at KTH. A Java-API for this animated face can be provided by the supervisor. Explore how well different communicative functions (such as emotions) can be preserved in the facial animation. References: Supervisor: Gabriel Skantze Title: Multiplayer games on IOS Theme: Visualisation Subject: The sheer explosion of games for IOS and Android is spectacular; currently there are more than 500 000 apps in Apple App Store, most of which are games. Although multiplayer is almost mandatory on other platforms, it's relatively rare on mobile devices, typically due to high costs for the connections and high amount of drop-outs. This is rapidly changing though, and games start to appear. In parallel, the interest and popularity of e-sports (live and via YouTube channels) is increasing. Possible essay projects:
Supervisor: Vahid Mosavat Title: Visualisation of neural data Theme: Visualisation / Simulations Subject: Visualisation is one of the most neglected aspect of a rapidly developing field of computational biology. Only recently can we observe an emerging trend for combining neural simulation frameworks with visualisation software. Still there are a plethora of challenging problems that need to be urgently addressed (high-dimensional data, pre-processing, integration with a simulation software, demands for purely visual aspects, interactive environment) to render visualisation a practical tool in computational studies. This is envisaged to facilitate computational modelling and assist in demonstrating scientific findings. Possible essay projects:
Supervisor: Pawel Herman SimulationTitle: Multi-scale brain simulations Theme: Simulations Subject: Simulations of neural systems and the brain can be performed on different scales, e.g. we could try to simulate every single neuron as detailed as possible. We could also assume populations of neurons to be the basic computational units and neglect the dynamics of single neurons. Libraries exist to simulate neural systems at several of these scales (e.g. GENESIS, NEURON, Nest, Nexa). These can be called from C++ or Python and be run on desktop machines as well as on supercomputers. Possible essay projects:
Supervisor: Pawel Herman Title: USAR-Robot Evaluation Theme:Artificial intelligence / Simulation Subject: Robots are playing an increasing role in Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) operations after disasters such as earthquakes, fires, industrial accidents, nuclear accidents (Fukushima), and terrorist acts (WTC). The design of robots and their user interfaces is however still to a large extent an open problem. Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Petter Ögren Title: Robocup Soccer Theme: Artificial intelligence / Simulation Subject: Robocup soccer simulation league is a yearly competition that drives development of multi agent artificial intelligence. The task is to implement behaviours for 11 individual agents playing simulated soccer, and then have these agents playing each other. Possible essay projects:
References:
Supervisor: Petter Ögren Title: Predator-Prey Dynamics Theory vs. Simulation Theme: Artificial intelligence / Simulation Subject: A classical description of eco-system dynamics is the so-called predator-prey model. It captures how the size of two competing animal groups in a common environment vary over time. For example, when there are lots of prey, say rabbits, the predators, say foxes, have lots of food and thus increase in number. This in turn makes the number of rabbits decrease, leading to a food shortage for the foxes and a subsequent decrease in the number of foxed. Now, once again the number of rabbits will increase, leading to a cyclic pattern in both species. Possible essay projects:
References: Supervisor: Petter Ögren Title: Silverfish simulation Theme: Simulation/Genetics Subject:You have all seen them when you switch on the bathroom light: little bugs, either scurrying to safety or playing dead. Their behaviour has of course been optimized by millions of years of evolution. Is it possible to simulate this? Will the simulated silverfish act more and more intelligently for each generation? Project highlights:
References:
Supervisor: Petter Ögren, Vahid Mosavat Speech and MusicTitle: Speech activity lifelogger Theme: Speech Technology Subject: Today there are many applications available that track different aspects of your everyday life, i.e. so-called "lifeloggers". Examples of such applications are systems that track your heart rate, your sleep talk, or your physical activity during the day. One critical challenge in these applications is how to present the data to the user, possibly encouraging the user to spend more time and/or more effort on the particular activity that is being tracked. At the department of Speech, Music and Hearing, we are interested in how to collect speech data from everyday life in order to develop new and challenging speech technology. One way to do this is to use a lifelogger application that records your speech activity. Except for applications within speech technology research, such a advice could also be attractable to the general public, allowing users to keep track of their everyday speech activities, for example in order to get an overview of their speech activity patterns over longer periods of time or to search their speech for a particular subject or interactive partner. Possible essay project: Design and develop a (smartphone) application that tracks and visualizes your speech activity during the day. Do some basic speech analysis and use machine learning to classify these data into different categories (e.g. dialogue, lecture, or tv/radio speech). Use these categories when visualizing your speech activity data over time in a way that gives the user a good overview. References: Supervisor: Anna Hjalmarsson Title: Stress tetris Theme: Physiological Game Control/Biofeedback in games Subject: In recent years an increasing number of devices that measures different types of biofeedback - EEG, heart rate, gaze behavior - have been made available at the commercial market at reasonable costs. These devices are often used to extract measures in order to evaluate new applications or to study users' reactions while performing different types of tasks. Another area of application is to use these devices as input to an application in order to control technology. One example of biofeedback is the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), e.g. the electrical conductance of the skin. GSR is often used to measure cognitive load, which is a concept used within cognitive psychology that refers to the load related to the executive control of working memory. Possible essay project: The object of this thesis project is to explore the use of GSR to control the level of difficulty in a computer game. There are different commercial devices available for measuring GSR, one such device is a wristband worn by the user while performing the task. You will implement a version of Tetris (or some other game) that use a GSR wristband as input and change the level of difficulty depending on the user's level of stress. References: Supervisor: Anna Hjalmarsson & Catharine Oertel Title: Web-based speech correction Theme: Speech technology Subject: Children with deviant speech often have difficulties perceiving the errors in their own speech. As a way of encouraging the children to direct their attention to their own speech production, technology has been developed that records the child’s erroneous production of a word, and synthesizes a corrected version of this production, i.e. what it would sound like if the child himself/herself was able to produce this word correctly. The recording, re-synthesis and playback procedures are implemented in a simple game-like environment in Tcl/Tk (with the Snack Sound Toolkit to handle audio recording and manipulation). In order to make the tool accessible to as many children as possible, a web-based solution would be preferable. Moreover, there are possibilities of designing new games that involve the re-synthesis technology - the more engaging the task, the more training the child will get. Possible essay project:Explore different ways of dealing with recording, modification and playback of speech (audio) over the web, and select the best-suited one to develop a web-based version of the current Tcl/Tk speech training tool. Implement procedures to handle user accounts and logging. Suggest new ideas for games that involve the re-synthesis technology. References: Supervisor: Anna Hjalmarsson & Sofia Strömbergsson Title: Annotation app for Android (and Iphone) Theme: Speech technology Subject: One of the most time consuming aspects of much modern research on human behavior is manual annotation of data. In many cases, this is an expensive and unavoidable step to get ground truth for machine learning and automatic analyses. In speech research, a common task is to annotate speech fragments or utterances with respect to some specific parameter, such as "is this laughter?", "is this a question or a statement?", or "is the speaker out of breath?". Currently it is common to use so-called crowd-sourcing or services such as the Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com) for this type of task. A less common but highly interesting variety of this is to use custom-built annotation apps for smart phones. Possible essay project: Develop an Android app that can annotate speech data from an audio file according to an annotation specification. Audio files and realistic annotation tasks for proof of concept and evaluation are available. A successful annotation of the provided data will generate new research results. References: Supervisor: Anna Hjalmarsson Title: Design of new expressive musical instruments for iPAD Theme: Sound and Music Computing / Affective computing/ Computer-human interaction Subject: A number of new musical instruments have been specially designed for the iPAD. The features of these instruments and their potential for musical expression are not explored from a scientific point of view. The use of sensor technology for reproducing and augmenting the functionalities of the interfaces with the player of common musical instruments is a particular challenge. Does it contribute something new to music performance or is it faking expressive interaction? Possible essay projects: Study and give a structured overview of new musical instruments making use of iPAD. Explore the different uses of the sensor technology of the iPAD, and relate them to the main musical features of the new instruments, the characteristics of the interaction with the player, and the connection between iPAD sensor technology and musical expression features. Based on the accumulated knowledge, design and implement the basic features of a successful new instrument using iPAD which is truly expressive and engaging for the player. References:
Supervisor: Roberto Bresin Title: App for sonification of heartbeat rate for both sport and health applications Theme: Sound and Music Computing / Biofeedback Subject: In the last couple of years many apps for real-time monitoring physiological parameters such as heartbeat rate during running have been developed for both iPhone and Android mobiles. This enables runners to check theirs own heartbeat rate by looking at the mobile phone display. Patients can send their heart information to a medical doctor. Sonification ("visualization" by sound) of physiological parameters is a much more attractive way to explore in order to e.g. synchronize and monitor athletesâ¤â movements for optimal performance or for medical diagnosis, monitoring and evaluation of treatment. By sonification complex structures in physiological data can be detected and evaluated in real time. Possible essay projects: Study and survey the performance of the most popular running log programs analyzing heartbeat rate, and/or of the most popular heartbeat monitoring programs for health applications. Based on an overview of literature for heartbeat rate sonification for professional purposes, suggest a better design for sonification of heartbeat rate, which can guide elite runners to continuously optimize their running actions during performance, and/or providing patients and medical doctors with helpful non-visual information. The new design is implemented in a mobile and evaluated under field conditions. References:
Supervisor: Roberto Bresin Title: App for the sonification of walking and running Theme: Sound and Music Computing / Biofeedback Subject: In the last couple of years many apps for real-time monitoring and logging of casual sport activities such as running have been developed for both iPhone and Android mobiles. This enables casual athletes to check theirs own performance by looking at the mobile phone display and by listening to voice messages. These apps, so fare, are not designed for monitoring the body posture of runners and walkers, which is an important parameter for optimizing energy consumption while training, or in rehabilitation. Sonification ("visualization" by sound) of body posture parameters is a promising way to explore in order to e.g. synchronize and monitor athletesâ¤â movements for optimal performance or for medical diagnosis, monitoring and evaluation of treatment. By sonification posture errors can be detected and adjusted in real time. Possible essay projects: Study and survey the performance of the most popular programs and technologies for analyzing of body posture in walking and running. Based on an overview of literature, suggest a better design for sonification of walking and running posture, which can guide runners and walkers to continuously adjust their posture while running and walking, and/or providing patients and medical doctors with helpful information in rehabilitation. The new design is implemented in a mobile and evaluated under field conditions. References:
Supervisor: Roberto Bresin Title: New approaches to expressive sound interaction for mobile devices Theme: Sound and Music Computing / Affective Computing / Computer-human interaction Subject: Smartphones or tablets offer a large range of possibilities for incorporating sound in the interaction with the user. Interaction can e.g. be multi-modal with gesture-based interface but how these features can support meaningful and novel ways of interaction with the user is to a large extent an unexplored field. Possible essay projects: Design and implement a system for efficient and expressive sound interaction on a smartphone or tablet. The focus can be in one of three areas: human-computer interaction (e.g. usability), medical /clinical use or art. Implement the basic features of the proposed system on a smartphone, and compare the suggested mode of interaction with graphic-based alternatives. Evaluate the expressive capabilities of the system and efficiency in interaction. References:
Supervisor: Roberto Bresin Title: Optimal fingering for keyboards Theme: Sound and Music Computing Subject: Keyboard players use complex strategies for organizing their fingering. The task is specified in the musical score giving the sequence and (approximate) timing for the key presses. The decision of which finger should be used for playing a certain note is left to the player. In sight-reading (playing the piece for the first time) the first choice is to unconsciously apply well-established fingering solutions to common sequences of notes. This skill is acquired through endless hours of practicing. In rehearsed performances, conscious considerations of the fingering based on the musical intentions and interpretation of the piece may alter the 'natural' basic scheme. Possible essay project: Design and implement a basic optimal fingering algorithm for keyboards. The repertoire is limited to a single melody line (only one note at a time). The input is a sequence of notes in MIDI-format and the output is a string of numbers indicating the fingering. The algorithm is evaluated on a small set of melody excerpts (from easy to difficult level) by a novice player and a (semi)professional pianist. References:
Supervisor: Anders Askenfelt Title: Optimal fingering for guitar performance Theme: Sound and Music Computing Subject: Guitar players face similar problems as keyboards players (see above), when choosing a fingering scheme for depressing the strings with the left hand. The complexity of organizing the fingering is, however even higher than for keyboards as the same note can be played on different strings. The alternatives are, however, not at all equivalent from musical and physiological points of view. As a consequence the guitarist is faced with a number of alternatives of fingering a single note and a much larger number of ways of fingering a couple of notes. Even for a short musical excerpt there is an explosion in the number of possible fingering combinations. The best choice depends on a combination of motoric and musical constraints. Possible essay project: Design and implement a basic optimal fingering algorithm for the guitar with six strings. The primary guiding principle should be "ease of playing." The repertoire is limited to a single melody line (only one note at a time). The input is a sequence of notes in MIDI-format and the output is a string of numbers indicating the fingering (string and finger). The algorithm is evaluated on a small set of melody excerpts (from easy to difficult level) by a novice player and a (semi)professional guitarist. References:
Supervisor: Anders Askenfelt Title: Music Information Retrieval using the Million Song Dataset Theme: Sound and Music Computing Subject: Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is about using audio features and meta information in order to make predictions about different musical aspects. It can be related to both high-level descriptions such as predicting genre, music similarity (´if you like this one you may also likeÄ¡), musical moods, as well as more specific things like melodic recognition and retrieval or tempo estimation. Advanced signal processing methods are used for computing audio features. For mapping features to descriptions often machine learning methods or statistical inference methods are used. The Million Song Data set (MSD) [1,2] provides a way to ´kick-start¡ an investigation in MIR since it contains a large number of pre-computed audio features for one million songs. Possible essay project: Make an overview of the available data and audio features in the MSD dataset and related sources like last.fm tags. Suggest how this can be used to predict different high-level aspects (genre, mood, similarity) and give examples of possible applications. Pick one of the ideas in 1) and make a prototype application. This could be a web application, mobile phone app or a Matlab script. References:
Supervisor: Anders Askenfelt & Anders Friberg Title: Sing me your status Theme: Speech and Music Technology Subject: A system capable of singing short text messages (SMS, twitter-tweets, chat messages, status updates etc...) could be a useful way of enhancing the content. Possible essay project: Composing a melody to a given text requires artistic skill and inspiration, but a rule-based matching strategy can probably produce decent results. One approach could be to use text-to-speech software to transcribe the text into a sequence of phonemes, and then analyze the phrasing and the placement of focused syllables. This data set could be matched against a set of known melodies, according to some rhythmic criteria based on intelligibility and artistic considerations. The result can be listened to through a singing speech synthesizer. The evaluation will show why and how a human composer would have performed much better. Supervisor: Anders Askenfelt & Jonas Beskow Title: Swype for desktops Theme: Speech Technology Subject: Android's Swype is a text input method for touch screen-based mobile telephones. It makes it easy to input words by drawing gestures on a virtual keyboard instead of pointing at each key singularly. The system is based on machine learning methods that can be trained on a number of swype examples and learn how classify gestures into words. Possible essay project: Develop and test a swype system for a desktop or laptop computer by using mouse or tablet input as well as touch screen input. Some important steps in the development include; implementing of a virtual keyboard that accepts input from common pointing devices (mouse, tablet, touch screen), and use of the virtual keyboard to record word examples and implement Hidden Markov Model algorithms for learning and testing. The system is trained and evaluated with a limited number of words. References:
Supervisor: Anders Askenfelt & Giampiero Salvi |