Department of Media Science

Understanding the Brain, Creating the Brain, and Supporting the Brain

Noboru Ohnishi

Professor, Department of Media Science

Human beings conduct important information processing such as seeing, hearing, and understanding languages. With the purpose of understanding, creating, and supporting the brain conducting such processing, we have worked out researches on:

1. Understanding how human beings conduct information processing.
2. Studying Humans excellent human functions as well as achieving artificial intelligence with the ability of audio-visual information processing by computer based on our original concepts.
3. Researching social welfare devices substituting or supporting audio-visual functions.

Our recent researches include extracting text information out of the images taken indoors and outdoors, separating each individual sound out of signals mixed with various sounds and noises, distinguishing each sound in the environment, learning in the field of physical and sensory systems without tutors, obtaining application and knowledge of audio-visual phenomena. These researches help promote human abilities or support human beings, which is the precept of our researches.

Modeling and Application of Human Information Processing Functions

Hiroaki Kudo

Associate Professor, Department of Media Science

Human beings possess excellent information processing structures. Analyzing such information structures will help understand human structures scientifically as well as apply such structures technologically to various fields. Imitating human information processing functions enables us to discover new methods of learning machines. Considering human characteristics enables us to provide basic data such as designing and developing “ Interface which is friendly to human beings “. Based on such concepts, he has worked out design of original experimental systems for human body function measurement, modeling of information processing procedures, and their technological applications.

Integration of Audio-visual information

Yoshinori Takeuchi

Associate Professor, Information security promotion office

Human beings possess excellent functions to follow moving objects using their eyes and deciding the direction where some sound or noise occurs by using ears. For example they can specify one person talking to them out of many people and continue to see the person. He has worked out researches on such human functions to follow more than one person by utilizing audio visual sensors. Particularly by integrating auditory and visual senses, he has targeted to organize better systems. He has also worked out researches on sensory substitution and supports for a visually and/or auditorily handicapped people by applying the systems. Especially he has worked out researches on communication supports for auditorily handicapped students while they are attending lectures and talking with other students as well as on sign language interpretation in the remote areas.

Targeting Flexible Information Systems

Tetsuya Matsumoto

Assistant Professor, Department of Media Science

He has worked out researches on information systems which recognize and understand multimedia data such as images by means of neural net and statistical learning methods. Users of the systems have their own preferences and objectives, so they try to utilize the information systems in their own way. It is important to consider how learning ability of the systems observe their diversity and apply to their own objectives. He has targeted to organize flexible learning systems which can be applied to users diversity.