MediaTeam Oulu

Professor Jaakko Sauvola, Dr. (Docent) Timo Ojala and Professor Tapio Seppänen
Information Processing Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Information Engineering,
University of Oulu
jaakko.sauvolaoulu.fi, timo.ojalaoulu.fi, tapio.seppanenoulu.fi
http://www.mediateam.oulu.fi

Background and Mission

MediaTeam Oulu (hereon MediaTeam), founded in 1997, is a research group of about 50 people at the Information Processing Laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Oulu. MediaTeam is a multidisciplinary research group, having researchers with backgrounds in electrical and information engineering, computer science, mathematics, linguistics and architecture.

MediaTeam's mission is to carry out leading-edge long-term research, which produces new scientific knowledge and novel technological solutions for mobile, distributed multimedia and communications.

MediaTeam conducts research on the features, use, and applications of multimedia and digital media types (image, sound, video, text) in information and communication systems. MediaTeam's research combines the different areas of information and telecommunications technology, with a special focus on mobility and wireless features as well as future generations of communication technology. MediaTeam's main fields of interest are distributed computing, image and video processing, information hiding, language and audio technology, mobile services and packet networks.

Scientific Progress

The Red Skins - Mobile Multimedia & IP Telephony Fabric project, funded by the National Technology Agency and industry, concluded in May 2003. Red Skins focused on research on 4G technologies such as mobility management, Internet-telephony security and software techniques enabling the development of distributed interactive communications services. Research topics included development of Mobile IPv6 handoff methods, error resiliency of IPT applications and distributed computing, especially in lightweight computing environments. The main results include a new hybrid model for mobility management in IPv6 networks, a method for improving distribution performance in slow wireless environments and a test environment for empirical evaluation of fourth-generation applications and protocols. Research on IPT application and SIP protocol implementation security and resilience against buffer overflow attacks was also conducted. A Jini-based service platform was developed which utilises an integrated context-information module and the delivery of multimedia services to PDA devices. A context information module was developed to ease context-aware application development by moving a part of the context information logic to the server module.

The three-year-long CAPNET - Context-Aware Pervasive Networking research program, funded by the National Technology Agency and industry, completed its second year in 2003. CAPNET is one of the four national spearhead initiatives funded by the NETS - Networks of the Future technology program. The goal of the CAPNET program is to create a foundation for new information and communications technologies and for business in the field. The focus is on context-aware mobile technologies for ubiquitous computing. These are technologies, which allow communication anytime and anywhere, with any kind of terminal device, automatically taking into account the characteristics of the network and the terminal.

The prototype developed in the CAPNET program is being tested in the Tietotalo building at the University of Oulu. For example a PDA device can be used as a testing platform.

The second year of CAPNET was formulated on five highly interdependent program areas: 1) user experience, 2) architecture development, 3) fundamental research, 4) prototyping and 5) test environment. In CAPNET, research problems and technology requirements are derived from actual usage needs and scenarios arising from real human needs (user experience). Application scenarios form a foundation for architecture and technology development and prototyping work. Fundamental research concentrates on crucial longer-term research problems in the domains of routine learning, content management, service discovery, connectivity management and so forth. The CAPNET architecture providing the foundation for implementing context-aware and pervasive systems and their components was developed further on the basis of the experiences from the first year of the programme. Industrial partners had an active role in the process offering their comments and valuable ideas for exploitation possibilities. The second prototype was successfully implemented and a working demonstration was introduced to partners. Also in 2003, CAPNET researchers made several visits to academic and industrial research centres around the world, gaining new valuable insights to context-aware system development. The CAPNET program will continue until the end of 2004.

The CAPNET application learned the locations and the profiles on the basis of profile settings made by the user. The figure shows the locations learned by the application and underneath them the profiles utilised in each location.

The Stardust - Business Analysis and Economic DRM Models in Mobile Distribution of Rich Digital Content project, funded by the National Technology Agency and industry, started in January 2002. The project is conducted jointly by the Department of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and MediaTeam. The purpose of the project is to research the mechanisms of electrical mobile commerce and the economic models related to the protection of digital contents as parts of future network and application services, as well as new service concepts of mobile telecommunications. These include peer-to-peer distribution, superdistribution, along with light downloadable applications as integral elements in creating new mobile services. The focus of the research is on new service mechanisms using complex revenue logic networks and on the modelling of network transactions, particularly in view of economic operating models and technologies supporting digital rights management.

The goal of the Stardust project is to research mobile distribution mechanisms such as superdistribution and to develop new business models, economic theories and related revenue logic in this area.

Stego - Hiding Secret Information in Audio and Video Recordings started in March 2002. The project, funded by the National Technology Agency and industry, focuses on developing methods of digital watermarking and the use of cryptography in digital rights management (DRM). DRM is used to protect digital content from illegal copying and distribution. The encrypted content can be safely transmitted to customers, but the content is no longer protected after the user decrypts it. Watermarking can be used to complement the cryptography by protecting the content after encrypting it. In the second year of the project the focus was on the development of a DRM testing platform, which uses public key encryption and watermarking in the protection of digital content. We study the use of these technologies in different scenarios to find solutions to possible attacks. The emphasis of digital watermarking research is on audio and it concentrates on two areas: robust watermarking and steganography. The former is used to embed a watermark that cannot be removed by a malicious user and the latter is used to hide as much data in the content as possible.

A general audio watermarking process.

A watermark embedding scheme for digital audio.

The mGain - Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture project, funded by the EU under the Information Society Technologies (IST) Program, started in September 2002. The project focused on various aspects of mobile entertainment, paying attention to technological, commercial, cultural, legal, and social features. The research aimed at creating analyses and surveys of the mobile entertainment industry and culture for use by EU authorities, the mobile entertainment industry and the scientific community. Particularly the needs and expectations of mobile entertainment users were considered in the research, emphasising service usability and pricing along with ethical and socio-economic issues.

The main topics of research were to benchmark the European situation with North America and Asia Pacific, to draw guidelines for the industry and political decision-makers, and to prepare mobile entertainment services and technologies within the 6th Framework Programme for research in the EU. The results are available at the project's website (http://www.mgain.org) and they will benefit not only developers of new entertainment services, but also various authorities whose tasks include issues related to consumer protection and content regulation. MediaTeam was responsible for mapping and analysing the technological area of mobile entertainment for the project. The analysis included searching for the technological possibilities and, on the other hand, also the shortcomings that affect the development of the mobile entertainment market in Europe. The project was completed in March 2004.

The new Rotuaari - Context-aware Mobile Multimedia Services project funded by the National Technology Agency, an international industrial consortium and the City of Oulu started in June 2003. This multidisciplinary project approaches context-aware mobile multimedia services from a number of different but complementary viewpoints addressing the following issues: context-aware computing, mobile ubiquitous multimedia, consumer behaviour, business and R&D networks, human computer interaction, security and safety, mobile learning and data mining. The three key components of the project are service environment, large-scale field trials and value networks.

A total of 194 test users participated in the first, month-long field trial of the Rotuaari project in September 2003. More than half of the users recommend the SmartRotuaari.

The service environment includes multiple wireless networks, versatile service platforms and a number of new services developed by the project and industrial partners. The services are empirically evaluated in large-scale field trials in the actual environment of use involving genuine end users and companies. The research is based on a seamless value network, which is modelled for the purpose of recognising the necessary conditions and processes of an effective R&D network. This way the project aims at stimulating a local ecosystem for producing new innovative mobile multimedia services based on viable business models. One of the main results of the project so far is the SmartRotuaari service system and its evaluation in the first large field trial in September 2003. More information is available at the project's website (http://www.rotuaari.net).

SmartLibrary is one of the service concepts developed in the Rotuaari project. The service allows library customers to browse the OULA library catalogue with mobile devices.

MediaTeam's research program on content-based multimedia retrieval is realised in three ongoing research projects funded by the Academy of Finland: Semantic Gap - Filling of the Semantic Gap in Information Retrieval, CBIR - Content-based Information Retrieval and Prosody of Emotions - Multiparametric Prosodic Analysis of Phonetic and Phonological Correlates of Emotions. The Vikings - Content-based Video Retrieval System for Distributed Environments project funded by the National Technology Agency and the industry was completed in May 2003.

This program investigates multimedia content analysis and its application in content-based video and audio retrieval systems. The main objective is to develop methods for narrowing down the so-called semantic gap between the concept-based and content-based approaches to database indexing, and the utilisation of these methods in practical retrieval applications. Filling the gap is important in order to enable the design of databases and search engines where it is easier to map user-specified search criteria to off-line/on-line computed index terms and the metadata of the database. The problem is especially unresolved as regards forthcoming media types like digital speech, music, image, and image sequence, where the search criteria often include semantic concepts. The problem is tackled with a cross-disciplinary approach involving information engineering, linguistics, natural sciences, and information studies. One specific and important goal in our program is successful participation in the annual TRECVID competition. The purpose of the competition is to promote progress in content-based multimedia retrieval through open and well-defined evaluation. It is the premier international benchmark in multimedia retrieval, bringing together the world's leading research groups in the field.

The VIRE video retrieval system is one of the main results of the program. VIRE is based on cluster-temporal browsing, a novel approach for interactive browsing and retrieval of large video databases. The approach combines the traditional timeline presentation of a video shot with that obtained by unsupervised multi-modal content-based clustering with self-organising maps into a single representation of the video database. The resulting 2-D view into the video database allows efficient interactive navigation in two semantic spaces - temporal adjacency and content similarity - simultaneously. The view can be refined with a selection of semantic, visual or textual features, which corresponds to detecting the presence of any designated semantic concept(s) in the video data represented to the user.

Additionally, VIRE supports manual query-based retrieval of video shots. The experimental results obtained at the international TRECVID 2003 competition showed that VIRE provides an efficient approach for realising interactive video retrieval.

The user interface for computer-aided content-based video browsing in the VIRE (Video browsing and Retrieval) system.

International and Domestic Collaboration

MediaTeam values close collaboration with its partners as an essential factor in conducting leading-edge research and in transferring research results into practical solutions. The most important partners are the following funding bodies, companies, and research organisations:

The National Technology Agency, the Academy of Finland, CCC, Ekahau, Elektrobit Group, Forefront, Hantro, Healthpoint Technologies, IBM, Jutel, Kaleva Kustannus, Leiki, Mercum, Nextime Solutions, Nokia, OPOY/Finnet Group, Osuuskauppa Arina, Oulun Liikekeskus ry., Solid Information Technology, TeliaSonera Finland, Valkeus Interactive, Yomi Fusion, VTT Electronics, Mobile Forum, City of Oulu, University of Maryland (USA), Linköping University (Sweden), and various research groups and laboratories in Finland and at the University of Oulu.

Exploitation of Results

The results have been disseminated to the academic community in the form of about 40 scientific publications. MediaTeam also puts great emphasis on the popularisation of science, which has resulted in dozens of articles in major Finnish newspapers, some international newspapers, professional magazines and periodicals, the teletext service of the Finnish Broadcasting Company and on-line news archives.

Future Goals

MediaTeam will continue to strive towards becoming one of the leading authorities in multimedia research. MediaTeam will pursue its goals of providing practical, easily adaptable solutions to the multimedia application industry and performing eminent research in its fields of expertise. MediaTeam will remain in active contact with the industry as a whole, as well as with its existing partners, and strengthen and develop its international network. MediaTeam will further improve its innovation process, to ensure an even more efficient manner of transforming research results into practical applications.

Personnel

External Funding

Selected Publications

Aittola M, Ryhänen T & Ojala T (2003) SmartLibrary - Location-aware mobile library service. Proc. Fifth International Symposium on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, Udine, Italy, 411-416.

Cvejic N & Seppänen T (2003) Audio watermarking using attack characterization. IEE Electronics Letters 39(13): 1020-1021.

Doermann D, Karunanidhi A, Parekh N & Rautio V (2003) A platform independent image and video engine. Proc. 2nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, Norrköping, Sweden, 35-42.

Howie D (2003) MIPv6 issues in delivering mobile multimedia. Proc. Advanced Simulation Technologies Conference 2003, Orlando, FL, USA, 49-55.

Löytynoja M, Seppänen T & Cvejic N (2003) Experimental DRM architecture using watermarking and PKI. Proc. First International Mobile IPR Workshop: Rights Management of Information Products on the Mobile Internet, Helsinki, Finland, 47-52.

Mäntyjärvi J & Seppänen T (2003) Adapting applications in mobile terminals using fuzzy context information. Interacting with Computers 15:512-538.

Ojala T, Korhonen J, Aittola M, Ollila M, Koivumäki T, Tähtinen J & Karjaluoto H (2003) SmartRotuaari - Context-aware mobile multimedia services. Proc. 2nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, Norrköping, Sweden, 9-18.

Peltonen J, Ollila M & Ojala T (2003) TimeMachine Oulu - Dynamic creation of cultural-spatio-temporal models as a mobile service. Proc. Fifth International Symposium on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, Udine, Italy, 342-346.

Rautiainen M, Ojala T & Seppänen T (2003) Cluster-temporal video browsing with semantic filtering. Proc. Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems, Ghent, Belgium, 116-123.

Rautiainen M, Penttilä J, Pietarila P, Noponen K, Hosio M, Koskela T, Mäkelä SM, Peltola J, Liu J, Ojala T & Seppänen T (2003) TRECVID 2003 experiments at MediaTeam Oulu and VTT. Proc. TRECVID Workshop at Text Retrieval Conference TREC 2003, Gaithersburg, MD.

Seppänen T, Toivanen J & Väyrynen E (2003) MediaTeam Speech Corpus: a first large Finnish emotional speech database. Proc. 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain, 3:2469-2472.

Seydou F, Duraiswami R & Seppänen T (2003) A boundary element method for electromagnetic scattering by multiple cylinders. Proc. 2003 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, Columbus, OH, 3:516-519.

Sun J & Sauvola J (2003) Mobility management reconsideration: hierarchical model and flow control methodology. Proc. 14th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, Beijing, China, 3:2809-2813.

Sun J, Tenhunen J & Sauvola J (2003) CME: a middleware architecture for network-aware adaptive applications. Proc. 14th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, Beijing, China, 1:839-843.

Suomi K, Toivanen J & Ylitalo R (2003) Durational and tonal correlates of accent in Finnish. Journal of Phonetics 31(1):113-138.

Väyrynen P & Seppänen T (2003) Using WordNet in information retrieval. Informaatiotutkimus 2:52-55. (in Finnish)