Perceptual interfaces for information interaction: joint processing of audio and visual information for human-computer interaction.

We are exploiting the human perceptual principle of sensory integration (the joint use of audio and visual information) to improve the recognition of human activity (speech recognition, speech event detection and speaker change), intent (intent to speak) and human identity (speaker recognition), particularly in the presence of acoustic degradation due to noise and channel. In this paper, we present experimental results in a variety of contexts that demonstrate the benefit of joint audio-visual processing.