Vocapia is participating in the EC project Kristina "A Knowledge-Based Information Agent with Social Competence and Human Interaction Capabilities". The project is funded under the ICT Research and Innovation action Multimodal and Natural Computer Interaction of the European Union Horizon 2020 research programme. Kristina started in March 2015 and will run for a period of 3 years.

The main objectives of the Kristina project are to carry out research in order to develop technologies for a human-like socially competent and communicative agent running on mobile communication devices that serves as a trusted information provider and mediator for questions related to basic care and healthcare. The targeted population are migrants, who face language and cultural barriers in their host countries.

Vocapia will work on developing speech technologies that will be used in a mobile, multimodal agent able to conduct an informed, flexible spoken language dialogue with the user. The agent will be capable of understanding and correctly interpreting the concerns of the user expressed by a combination of facial, gestural and verbal signals in varied, culturally influenced circumstances. The technologies will be validated in a series of use cases, for which prolonged trials will be carried out to assess the prototype marking the termination of a software development cycle. The subjects will be a representative number of migrants recruited from the migration circles identified as especially in need in two European countries: elderly Turkish migrants and their relatives; and short term Polish care-giving personnel in Germany; and North African migrants in Spain.

Vocapia's partners in Kristina are:

• Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain;
• Sociedad Española de Medicina de Familia y Comunitaria, Spain;
• Almende BV, Netherlands;
• Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece;
• University of Augsburg, Germany;
• Universität Tübingen, Germany;
• Universität Ulm, Germany;
• Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, Kreisverband Tübingen, Germany.

Project website: kristina-project.eu

Vocapia Research is a French R&D company and software publisher with over 20 years of experience in providing leading edge speech technologies for many languages, including most major European languages as well as Arabic, Mandarin, and Russian. The Vocapia Research VoxSigma^® software suite uses advanced language technologies such as language identification, speech recognition, and speaker identification to transform raw audio and audiovisual data into structured and searchable XML documents. This technology relies on decades of research at LISN, with which there is a privileged partnership. Joint systems developed with LISN have achieved top ranks in national and international challenges on speech-to-text transcription. Located at the heart of the science innovation cluster of Paris Saclay, France, Vocapia Research is a leader in developing and adapting AI-based solutions for both civil and defence applications. These applications include audio and audiovisual data mining (broadcast and web data, telephone speech), production of subtitles, OSINT and COMINT, and the analysis of aeronautical communications (air traffic control, voice command). Readers who wish to get more information about Vocapia Research are invited to check out the Vocapia Research website or use the contact information page http://www.vocapia.com/contact.