Audio-Visual Media Research Platform

The strategic objective of this platform grant is to underpin Audio-Visual Media Research within the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) to pursue fundamental research combining internationally leading expertise in understanding of real-world audio and visual data, and to transfer this capability to impact new application domains. Our goal is to pioneer new technologies which impact directly on industry practice in healthcare, sports, retail, communication, entertainment and training. This builds on CVSSP's unique track-record of world-leading research in both audio and visual machine perception which has enabled ground-breaking technology exploited by UK industry. The strategic contribution and international standing of the centres research in audio and visual media has been recognised by EPSRC through two previous platform grant awards (2003-14) and two programme grant awards in 2013 and 2015. Platform Grant funding is requested to reinforce the critical mass of expertise and knowledge of specialist facilities required to contribute advance in both fundamental understanding and pioneering new technology. In particular this Platform Grant will catalyse advances in multi-sensory machine perception building on the Centre's unique strengths in audio and vision. Key experienced post-doctoral researchers have specialist knowledge and practical know-how, which is an important resource for training new researchers and for maintaining cutting edge research using state-of-the-art facilities. Strategically the Platform Grant will build on recent independent advances in audio and visual scene analysis to lead multi-sensory understanding and modelling of real-world scenes. Research advances will provide the foundation for UK industry to lead the development of technologies ranging from intelligent sensing for healthcare and assisted living to immersive entertainment production. Platform Grant funding will also strengthen CVSSP's international collaboration with leading groups world-wide through extended research secondments US (Washington, USC), Asia (Tsinghua, Tianjin, Kyoto, Tokyo, KAUST) and Europe (INRIA, MPI, Fraunhofer, ETH, EPFL, KTH, CTU, UPF).