Switzerland’s Idiap Research Institute launched two disruptive speech recognition innovations
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19 August 2013
Western Switzerland, August 19, 2013. Koemei, a spin-off of Idiap Research Institute, invented a high-precision speech recognition algorithm; this new application also generates an accurate text transcript from any video. As emphasized by Temitope Ola, CEO of Koemei, “transcripts can be manually amended, are searchable, and can be shared among various users.” Koemei’s innovative tool […]
Western Switzerland, August 19, 2013.
Koemei, a spin-off of Idiap Research Institute, invented a high-precision speech recognition algorithm; this new application also generates an accurate text transcript from any video. As emphasized by Temitope Ola, CEO of Koemei, “transcripts can be manually amended, are searchable, and can be shared among various users.”
Koemei’s innovative tool started to be used by broadcaster Aljazeera, in particular on the occasion of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech. Thanks to this innovation, Koemei has been selected by the authoritative “The Next Web” as one of the top 5 start-up from an original selection of 500 companies.
In addition, Mediaparl, an Idiap Research Institute’s project, launched a high-precision system capable of recognizing languages spoken with non-native and local accents; this new system can also recognize several languages, a very important feature in a country like Switzerland where people frequently shift from one language to another one.
Mediaparl is already being used during multilingual parliamentary sessions in Switzerland. (see www.idiap.ch/webapps/webgrandconseil/). “Our application allows to have the parliamentary debates converted into text transcripts very quickly and at a low cost, though human proofreading is still necessary” indicates Alexandre Nanchen, Mediaparl’s project manager.
Western Switzerland lays major emphasis on industry-academia technology transfer.
“We are extremely pleased that universities and research institutes in Western Switzerland produce so many successful start-ups and disruptive applications,” commented Philippe D. Monnier, Executive Director of the Greater Geneva Berne area i.e. the dynamic Western part of Switzerland which is attracting a myriad of fast growing high-tech companies from all over the world and where Idiap Research Institute is based. “These successes corroborate the fact that Switzerland is systematically top ranked in terms of academia-industry technology transfer.”
About Idiap Research Institute
The Idiap Research Institute is an independent nonprofit research foundation. Its activities encompass basic research and development in the areas of multimedia information management, perceptual and cognitive systems, social media, biometric person recognition, multimodal information interfaces, and large scale machine learning. It has about 100 staff members composed by 31 nationalities. It collaborates closely with the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and an array of other universities.
About the Greater Geneva Berne area
The Greater Geneva Berne area (GGBa) is the official economic development agency representing six Cantons (i.e. States) of Western Switzerland. GGBa’s primary mission is to support foreign-based companies looking to establish business operations in Western Switzerland.
Further enquiries:
Philippe D. Monnier, Executive Director of the Greater Geneva Berne area;
tel. +41 21 644 00 90; e-mail: p.monnier@ggba-switzerland.ch
