Tsinghua University and Alibaba Group Announce Joint Lab on Natural Human-Computer Interaction Research
On April 3rd, Tsinghua University and Alibaba Group announced that they will together establish a joint research lab that focuses on the natural experience for human-computer interaction (HCI).
This is the first HCI-focused joint research lab that Alibaba has unveiled since the company launched an innovative global research program, “Alibaba DAMO Academy”, in October last year. The program will focus on both fundamental and disruptive research, with HCI as one of the key areas among others.
The partnership will see both parties collaborating on frontier technologies including multi-source emotion data analysis, affective computing, tangible interaction, and multimodal perception and interaction, which are fundamental in driving forward the advancement of HCI study. Researchers from both parties with a diversity of expertise in cognitive science, linguistics, physiology and aesthetics will join forces in spearheading different research projects. Prof. Xu Yingqing, Director of the Future Lab at Tsinghua University, and Paul Fu, Senior Director of User Experience for Alibaba Group, will lead the lab’s operation and research directions.
Prof. Yang Bin, Vice President of Tsinghua University, said: “by making machines better understand and communicate with humans, HCI is expected to revolutionize various industries and make profound impacts on how we work and live.” Yang added, “Tsinghua University is a global research institute with leading edge in a wide array of fields including computer science, engineering, liberal arts and design, while Alibaba has rich experience in product development and design in the HCI field. We are confident that the joint lab with global talents will yield fruitful research results in the near future.”
Jeff Zhang, Chief Technology Officer, Alibaba Group said: “Graphic interfaces and the touchscreen have demonstrated how new ways of interaction could lead to an unprecedented information revolution. As artificial intelligence and data technologies advance, humans’ senses and emotions will be further digitalized and become the new modes of interaction with machines.” Zhang added: “we are excited about the prospects of another wave of the information revolution based on new HCI, and it is our honor to have a distinguished partner like Tsinghua University to join us in leading a breakthrough in next-generation HCI research.”
The lab’s technological innovation is expected to be applied in a wide array of commercial scenarios, including new retail, autonomous driving and smart living in the future, where human emotions or affective states are better understood, while multi-module interaction that involves two or more of the five senses - visual, auditory, speech, touch and smell - will become a dominant mode of interaction with machines.
For example, consumers’ preference towards a product can be digitalized to help merchants with better product designs and personal recommendations based on feedback from consumers’ affective states. Also, studies have shown that drivers’ reaction to touch stimulation is much faster than their reaction to visual signals, implying prospects for auto cockpit redesign that combines both visual and touch interfaces for safer driving.
Alibaba has been a pioneer in both fundamental technological research and its commercial application in areas such as speech recognition and visual recognition. Last December, Alibaba introduced far-field voice-recognition technology to the ticketing kiosks in Shanghai metro stations to enable faster ticket purchasing. Through combining signal-processing and computer-vision technology, Alibaba is able to better identify sound sources and solve the problem of intense noise disturbance.
As a global research institute, Tsinghua University has solid research background in areas including natural interaction experience, multimedia computing, multi-user sharing interface management and multimodal human-computer interaction.
