# Presentation: 495457

## NIST Meeting Data Collection

- Jean Scholtz
- National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8940
- USA

## Goals / Approach

- _Goals_
- (Intermediate) Support evaluation efforts for speech community
- (Future) Support evaluation efforts for context-aware/ubicomp community
- _Approach_
- Provide rich/diverse pool of audio video corpora for advanced recognition research
- Provide infrastructure for integration and evaluation
- Provide flexible architecture for incorporating and annotating activities in sensor –rich environment

**Notes:**
 Fiber optics is economical for high-volume, fixed applications.  It is still too expensive to set up (cost of infrastructure) for communications with rural areas.  Especially for developing countries, satellite communications is expected to be the long-haul transport mechanism of choice for a number of years to come.
 BWA is a fixed wireless system, usually between a tower (base station) connected to a core network and a number of clients (buildings).  This leads to a star network topology.
 Wireless ad hoc networks allow peer-to-peer communications as well as user mobility.  You are not bound to sit in your house to get the lectures, and you have the chance to communicate with fellow students and possibly collaborate with them on certain projects.

## NIST Data Collection Laboratory

- Typical meeting space equipped with standard meeting equipment
- Instrumented with
- 	200 microphones, 5 cameras – all synchronized with NIST SmartFlow system across 13 processors
- 	several disk arrays handle huge storage requirements
- Monitor/Review workstation in adjoining room
- 	operator can start/stop data streams, select video views, audio channels, and manipulate cameras
- 	participants can review meeting recordings and deselect excerpts from public distribution
- Relational database log with user interface

**Notes:**
 Tracking is easy and only three satellites are needed to cover the earth.  However, GEO satellite system require high transmission power, which translates into a minimum terminal size.  It has long delay: 240 – 270 msec two way propagation delay, uplink and downlink together, depending on elevation angle from user location – which translates into roughly 500 msec round trip delay.  The satellite has to be on the earth’s equatorial plane, which means there could be a finite number of satellites on this orbit to avoid physical collisions.  The available frequency spectrum assigned to GEO satellite systems is a more important limitation for these systems.  Currently, there are hundreds of GEO satellites belonging to various countries operating at the circular geostationary orbit.
 According to Kepler laws, non-geostationary orbits are elliptical with earth at one focal point of the orbit and the satellite speed varies as it rotates around the earth on this type of orbit.  You need a lot more satellites to cover the earth with LEO or MEO satellites. For example, the Iridium system, developed by Motorola, requires 66 satellites.  So, LEO and MEO satellite networks are more complicated than their GEO counterparts.  However, they require lower transmission powers and yield smaller delays. 

## NIST Meeting Data Collection Laboratory

**NIST ‘SmartFlow’ synchronization**

## Meeting Review/Monitor Workstation

- Used to both collect and review recordings
- LINUX-based, interfaces with Smartflow live or archived data
- User can select video views and audio channels
- User can control camera view/movement with joystick

## Scenario Ontology

**Scenario Type**

**Scenario Example**

**Dimensions**

**Tasks**

- Time

- Participants

- Duration (minutes)

- Local vs. Remote

- Same people

- Different people

- Org. pre vs. adhoc

- #of participants

- Domain expertise

- Moderator

- planning

- Brainstorming

- Negotiation

- Decision making

- Competitive
- performance

- Dissemination of
-  Information

- Different

**Focus group  **
**discussion**

- Place

- Local

- 60

- 5-8

- none

- adhoc

**Round Table discussion**: May include expert to present info and moderate discussion

**Staff meeting**

- Local

- 45

- 5-8

- adhoc

- Participants discuss real technical issues, brainstorm ideas and make decisions.

**Planning**

- Local

- 45

- 5-8

- none

- adhoc

**Event planning:** Plan the different tasks that each member will carry out, timelines and coordination.

**  ****Interactive     game playing**

- Local

- 60

- 3-5

- none

- pre

**Information exchange and decision making **

**Information gathering and decision making**

- Local

- Local

- 45

- 45

- 5-8

- 3-5

- adhoc

- pre

- none

- none

**Office Furnishing:** An expert will help participants to choose office furniture, carpet, etc. for an office.

- Participants engage in a storytelling games, e.g. Once upon a time, Settlers of catan.

**Shop on line: **Participants search the internet and collaborate to purchase computer hardware.

## Pilot Corpus Design

- 20 hours of meetings are being collected
- ~60 GB per hour uncompressed data rate
- data stored/distributed on large hard disks
- Varied forums
- focus groups, game playing, interacting with experts, real working group meetings, event planning
- Varied meeting lengths
- 15 minutes to 1 hour
- Varied number of participants
- 3 to 8 participants

## Sample of Meetings Collected

| Topic | Meeting Type | Date | Length
(min) | Native
M / F | Non-native
M / F | Participants |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| IAD New Year Party Planning | Planning | 12/12/01 | 60 | 0 / 2 | 0 / 1 | 3 |
| IAD Open House | Planning | 3/5/02 | 56 | 1 / 4 | 1 / 1 | 7 |
| ITL Party Planning | Planning | 1/11/02 | 28 | 3 / 2 | 0 / 1 | 6 |
| Bioterrorism | Focus group | 11/15/01 | 120 | 3 / 1 | 0 / 0 | 4 |
| Office Furniture Layout | Interaction with expert | 2/14/02 | 55 | 1 / 3 | 0 / 2 | 6 |
| Settlers of Catan | Game playing | 1/25/02 | 60 | 0 / 0 | 3 / 1 | 4 |
| Once Upon a Time | Game playing | 3/4/02 | 58 | 1 / 1 | 2 / 0 | 4 |
| Real Working Group | Staff meeting | 2/13/02 | 69 | 3 / 2 | 1 / 0 | 6 |
| Shop On-line | Collaborative design | 3/19/02 | 60 | 1 / 0 | 3 / 0 | 4 |

## Use of Architecture

**Context-Aware apps**

**Non-aware apps**

- Can incorporate component technologies, log interactions, evaluate

- Can incorporate context widgets, log interactions, evaluate

## Future Plans

- Extend to distributed meetings/activities
- Provide test bed capabilities to allow developers of applications to incorporate new component technologies and capture user interactions for user-centered evaluations.
-   Develop annotation ontology for user interactions to facilitate user-centered evaluations of meeting room applications.
-   Extend this capability to context-aware applications allowing developers access to sensor inputs without having to install those sensors in their environment.
-   Create community of researchers interested in using this technology