The Lightweight, Multi-speaker, Multi-lingual Indic Text-to-Speech (LIMMITS’23) challenge is organized as part of the ICASSP 2023 signal processing grand challenge. LIMMITS’23 aims at the development of a lightweight, multi-speaker, multi-lingual Text to Speech (TTS) model using datasets in Marathi, Hindi, and Telugu. The challenge encourages the advancement of TTS in Indian Languages as well as the development of techniques involved in TTS data selection and model compression. The 3 tracks of LIMMITS’23 have provided an opportunity for various researchers and practitioners around the world to explore the state of the art in TTS research.

Blockchain Technology (BT) is a futuristic data management technology that eliminates the intermediary/ third-party/central authority as it is operated over a peer-to-peer network running cryptographic protocols. It is tamper-proof as it utilizes a cryptographic hash feature. Some other features, it offers, are transparency, security, inalterability, immutability, and decentralization; these features of the BTs have acquired the wide attention of the computing research community. While a transaction is occurring between two parties, it ensures that the trust is a consensus-driven built-in technology component instead of relying on a third party for the same. With the help of a consensus algorithm, the newly generated block is appended at the end of the already existing chain. In this paper, a thorough analysis of the various blockchain consensus algorithms is conducted including their benefits and drawbacks. Finally, it enlists the challenges and opportunities in designing blockchain consensus algorithms. Further, it proposes an idea for designing a blockchain consensus algorithm and concludes the discussion.

Global geometric algorithms for trajectory planning are used in conjunction with a local avoidance strategy. Simulations have been developed for a mobile robot in the plane among stationary and moving obstacles. Essentially, the robot has a geometric planner that provides a coarse trajectory (the path and the velocity along it), which may be modified by a (low-level) local avoidance module if sensors detect obstacles in the vicinity of the robot. This hierarchy makes effective use of the complementarity between global trajectory planning and local obstacle avoidance.>