LiDAR Point Cloud segmentation is a key input to downstream tasks such as object recognition and classification, obstacle avoidance, and even 3D reconstruction. Akey challenge in the segmentation of large city-scale datasets is uneven distribution of points to specific classes and significant class imbalances. As highly detailed point cloud datasets of urban environments become available, neural networks have shown significant performance in recognizing large well-defined objects. However, data is fed into these networks in chunks and the scheme by which data is presented for training and evaluation can have a significant impact on performance. In this work, we establish a method analogous to gradients in image processing to segment the ground in point clouds, achieving an accuracy of 91.4% on the Sensaturban dataset. By isolating the ground, we reduce the quantity of classes that need to be segmented from structures in urban LiDAR and improve data partitioning schemes when combined with random/grid down-sampling techniques for neural network inputs.

Current mission planning simulations are typically carefully designed around a tradeoff between tight integration with accurate geospatial data or meeting real-time demands. Our proposed system is designed to achieve both. Deriving from work on cloud geospatial stores and mission planning systems, we are developing a platform for consuming new data, building it into models accessible from a real-time simulation server, and constructing machine learning systems over this data. This combination of large datasets with continuous pipelines feeding a real-time simulation forces us to bring together innovations on both the cloud infrastructure and user interface level.

In an emergency, response services require guaranteed availability regardless of failures in data transport layer and cloud service providers. In the work-in-progress reported here, we discuss three projects that have requirements that stress web infrastructure in preparing for and responding to emergencies. Our goal is to highlight the tradeoffs in costs and benefits of web services in each case, and to provide an indication of our approaches in addressing these issues.

This paper describes the main components of MiPad (multimodal interactive PAD) and especially its distributed speech processing aspects. MiPad is a wireless mobile PDA prototype that enables users to accomplish many common tasks using a multimodal spoken language interface and wireless-data technologies. It fully integrates continuous speech recognition and spoken language understanding, and provides a novel solution for data entry in PDAs or smart phones, often done by pecking with tiny styluses or typing on minuscule keyboards. Our user study indicates that the throughput of MiPad is significantly superior to that of the existing pen-based PDA interface. Acoustic modeling and noise robustness in distributed speech recognition are key components in MiPad's design and implementation. In a typical scenario, the user speaks to the device at a distance so that he or she can see the screen. The built-in microphone thus picks up a lot of background noise, which requires MiPad be noise robust. For complex tasks, such as dictating e-mails, resource limitations demand the use of a client-server (peer-to-peer) architecture, where the PDA performs primitive feature extraction, feature quantization, and error protection, while the transmitted features to the server are subject to further speech feature enhancement, speech decoding and understanding before a dialog is carried out and actions rendered. Noise robustness can be achieved at the client, at the server or both. Various speech processing aspects of this type of distributed computation as related to MiPad's potential deployment are presented. Previous user interface study results are also described. Finally, we point out future research directions as related to several key MiPad functionalities.

Dr. Who is a Microsoft research project aiming at creating a speech-centric multimodal interaction framework, which serves as the foundation for the NET natural user interface. MiPad is the application prototype that demonstrates compelling user advantages for wireless personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, MiPad fully integrates continuous speech recognition (CSR) and spoken language understanding (SLU) to enable users to accomplish many common tasks using a multimodal interface and wireless technologies. It tries to solve the problem of pecking with tiny styluses or typing on minuscule keyboards in today's PDAs. Unlike a cellular phone, MiPad avoids speech-only interaction. It incorporates a built-in microphone that activates whenever a field is selected. As a user taps the screen or uses a built in roller to navigate, the tapping action narrows the number of possible instructions for spoken word understanding. MiPad currently runs on a Windows CE Pocket PC with a Windows 2000 machine where speech recognition is performed. The Dr Who CSR engine uses a unified CFG and n-gram language model. The Dr Who SLU engine is based on a robust chart parser and a plan-based dialog manager. The paper discusses MiPad's design, implementation work in progress, and preliminary user study in comparison to the existing pen-based PDA interface.

MiPad is one of the application prototypes in a project codenamed Dr Who. As a wireless Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), MiPad fully integrates continuous speech recognition (CSR) and spoken language understanding (SLU) to enable users to accomplish many common tasks using a multimodal interface and wireless technologies. It tries to solve the problem of pecking with tiny styluses or typing on minuscule keyboards in today’s PDAs or smart phones. It also avoids the problem of being a cellular telephone that depends on speech-only interaction. MiPad incorporates a built-in microphone that activates whenever a field is selected. As a user taps the screen or uses a built-in roller to navigate, the tapping action narrows the number of possible instructions for spoken language processing. MiPad currently runs on a Windows CE Pocket PC with a Windows 2000 Server where speech recognition is performed. The Dr Who CSR engine has a 64k word vocabulary with a unified context-free grammar and n-gram language model. The Dr Who SLU engine is based on a robust chart parser and a plan-based dialog manager. This paper discusses MiPad’s design, implementation work in progress, and preliminary user study in comparison to the existing pen-based PDA interface. 1.