edited by P C Yuen (Hong Kong Baptist University) , Y Y Tang (Hong Kong Baptist University) , & P S P Wang (Northeastern University, USA)

With the advance of speech, image and video technology, human–computer interaction (HCI) will reach a new phase.

In recent years, HCI has been extended to human–machine communication (HMC) and the perceptual user interface (PUI). The final goal in HMC is that the communication between humans and machines is similar to human-to-human communication. Moreover, the machine can support human-to-human communication (e.g. an interface for the disabled). For this reason, various aspects of human communication are to be considered in HMC. The HMC interface, called a multimodal interface, includes different types of input methods, such as natural language, gestures, face and handwriting characters.

The nine papers in this book have been selected from the 92 high-quality papers constituting the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Multimodal Interface (ICMI '99), which was held in Hong Kong in 1999. The papers cover a wide spectrum of the multimodal interface.

• Introduction to Multimodal Interface for Human–Machine Communication (P C Yuen et al.)
• Algorithms:
  • A Face Location and Recognition System Based on Tangent Distance (R Mariani)
  • Recognizing Action Units for Facial Expression Analysis (Y-L Tian et al.)
  • View Synthesis Under Perspective Projection (G C Feng et al.)
• Single Modality Systems:
  • Sign Language Recognition (W Gao & C Wang)
  • Helping Designers Create Recognition-Enabled Interfaces (A C Long et al.)
• Information Retrieval:
  • Cross-Language Text Retrieval by Query Translation Using Term Re-Weighting (I Kang et al.)
  • Direct Feature Extraction in DCT Domain and Its Applications in Online Web Image Retrieval for JPEG Compressed Images (G Feng et al.)
• Multimodality Systems:
  • Advances in the Robust Processing of Multimodal Speech and Pen Systems (S Oviatt)
  • Information-Theoretic Fusion for Multimodal Interfaces (J W Fisher III & T Darrell)
  • Using Virtual Humans for Multimodal Communication in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (D Thalmann)