FAETHON: Unified Intelligent Access to Heterogeneous Audiovisual Content

“FAETHON will create a novel system exploiting the advances in handling audio-visual (a/v) content and related metadata, as introduced by MPEG-4 and MPEG-7, to offer advanced access services characterised by the tri-fold "semantic phrasing of the request (query)", "unified handling" and "personalised response". The proposed system will play the role of an intermediate access server residing between end users and multiple heterogeneous archives organised according to new MPEG standards. The core technological target of the project is to blend the achievements in characterising a/v content - especially visual and acoustical - with innovative hybrid intelligence technologies in order to: (i) offer unified semantic views to existing a/v archives, beyond the classification schemes and subject indexes of each archive, (ii) personalise those views according to the context defined by the profile of individual users. The project will produce novel tools and methods for extracting high-level semantic information through Dynamic Thematic Categorisation (DTC) of a/v content units and Detection of Events and Composite Objects (DECO) within the archived a/v material. DTC will provide a fuzzy association of a/v units to the nodes of a Thematic Categorisation Structure reflecting the interests of specific users/groups. DECO corresponds to the identification of composite objects or events that have semantic interpretation. A variety of associations will be possible at this level. The project will reduce their number by exploring the specific user behaviour and constructing ‘personalised’ sub-associations; consequently, it will adapt its performance to the specific users’ interests, thus increasing its information retrieval efficiency. Using statistics and relevance feedback will be examined to assist personalization. Hybrid intelligent techniques, mainly neurofuzzy approaches, will be explored for constructing/learning the most appropriate semantic associations.” (from the Project Programme)

Partners:

• Sysware, SA Greece
• Lambrakis Research Foundation Greece
• Joanneum Research Austria
• Fi lm Archive Austria
• Universitat Politecnica Spain
• Oracle GmbH Austria
• National Technical University Athens
• Hellenic Broadcasting Corp ERT Greece