Funded Projects

2020 - 2024

Technology Innovation Hub (TIH), IIT Guwahati

Status: Member

Funding Agency: Department of Science & Technology, (DST), Govt. of India

Valued at INR1.35 billion

Consultancy

2012-2013

Real-time monitoring and supportive supervision of VHND and RI using mobile technology

Funding Agency: UNICEF

Valued at INR 19,44,800

2009-2014

Intelligent Robot Human Interaction & Embedded Systems

Funded by the Dept. of Science & Technology, Government of India, under the FIST (2009) programme

For more details, visit: http://www.iitg.ac.in/cse/robotics/'

2007-2008

Chakshu: An Assistive User Interface for the Visually Challenged

Funding Agency: Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India

Value of project : INR 10,00,00 (approx.)

Duration : Two years

Status & Designation: Co-PI

Objectives : The main aim is to empower the visually challenged with the ability to use computers and browse the web with ease. The project aims at bringing out economical, cost-effective and affordable software to be used by all visually challenged/impaired.

2003-2004

A High-End Interface for Robots/Devices Embedded on the Net

Funding Agency: Microsoft Corp. USA under the Microsoft Academic Alliance

Value of project: USD 8240 (approx.)

Duration : One and a half years

Designation: Investigator

Objectives : The initial objective of the project was to build an integrated environment using Microsoft’s .Net Framework for controlling remotely (via the web) a class of devices. The devices would behave just as any other Internet device currently available on the web and include robots among others. New devices may be connected by merely registering their specifications at a Central Server (CS). A working prototype of the same featuring speech input (using MS-SAPI) and a Natural Language processor for conversion to robot-comprehensible commands for the same was been developed. While the robots are connected to remote servers, a Central Server performs the job of scheduling and message passing between the client machine and the remote Language and Robot servers. The system allows a user to issue voice commands in near NL to remote robots connected to a network. Testing was been carried out using two “Robix-Rascal” - reconfigurable robots and later using Lego Mindstorms.

An improved system (Robots in the Network-RobIN-II) that uses a wizard for deploying robots and devices was developed. The wizard used web services and attempted to reduce the burden of deployment. Exposed Web methods or functionalities can be later consumed by a remote user and used for meta programming to achieve control of multiple devices and robots scattered across the network. We have added a feature - intelligence sharing - by robots over the web (intelligent Robots in the Network – iRobIN). This architecture allows robots to co-exist and co-operate by sharing the intelligence gained by them over the network via an Intelligence Access Point (IAP). These networked robots have been made free to some extent under the iRobIN framework using concepts from the Mobile Ad hoc Network of Intelligent Robots (MANER). Robots within MANER are now empowered to exchange/share intelligence and if this is not sufficient to cope up with the environment, reach out to others via iRobIN. Later work included clubbing iRobIN, MANER and SapienNet to form the ultimate Robot-Human social network nick-named RoboSapienNet.

Apart from this, work on how artificial immune networks can assist robots to co-operate and exist was also carried out. Robot control using neural networks and genetic algorithms for obstacle avoidance and learning gaits respectively has also been carried out as some Master’s level projects under this project.

2002-2003

Design & Development of An Intelligent Assisting Agent for Microsoft Windows Desktop

Sponsoring Agency: Microsoft Corp. USA under the Microsoft Academic Alliance

Value of project: USD 5765 (approx.)

Duration : One and a half years

Status & Designation: Completed, Investigator

Objectives:The basic aim of this project is to add a plug-in Assisting Agent to the Windows desktop environment that will take over and learn the user’s behaviour (such as what he does routinely, how he schedules his tasks, checks and filters emails, the content he browses for on the web, his other interests, etc.). Once the profile is built and learnt, the agent behaves semi-autonomously, emulating the user and seeking his inputs for any possible deviations. The profile is something that is continuously updated and learnt. With multiple users, multiple assisting agents come into the scenario, to exchange the learned user profiles, remove redundancy and work co-operatively to build a virtual office inside the system.

1999-2003

Resource Centre for Indian Language Technology Solutions, IIT Guwahati

Funding Agency: Ministry of Information Technology, Govt. of India.

Value of the project: INR 89,35,000

Duration: Three years

Status & Designation: Completed, Co-Principal Investigator

About the Centre:

The Centre was set up in the year 2000 and as one among thirteen such Centres set up nationwide to conduct research, develop products and act as IT clinics for Indian Language Technologies. The Centre was assigned the task of carrying out investigations on the two major languages of the North-East viz. Assamese and Manipuri. Two Principal Investigators, two Co-Investigators and eight project personnel (including three linguists) actively pursued research. The Centre had tied-ups with Gauhati University for linguistic support.

Achievements:

Products:

Bilingual On-line Dictionaries

English to Assamese & Assamese to English (featuring, among others, pronunciation by a native speaker).

Manipuri to English Dictionary

On-line Dictionary Server & Search Engine (Applet based) for the above.

A Linguistic Map of the Languages of the North-Eastern states of India made available on the Web.

Assamese & Manipuri fonts.

Assamese support for Microsoft Word (with same layout as the popular Leap Office from C-DAC, India).

A Morphological Analyser for Assamese.

An Assamese language corpus created.

Spell Checker for Assamese with MS Word support.

Services:

A Web site containing historical, geographic, demographic and linguistic information of the North-East India. There are more than 200 different languages (not dialects) in this part of the country; some active while others on the verge of extinction. The project collected information on many of these.

Research:

An Assamese language (voice + language processing) interface for the website is being investigated.

Assamese speech corpus developed.

A similar (English – Voice & Natural Language) prototype interface for robots/networked-devices was implemented and tested.

Investigations into adapting Angla-Bharati English-Hindi MT System developed by IIT Kanpur to an English-Assamese MT System were also carried out.

Work on enhancing an Assamese OCR system was carried out with technology transferred from ISI, Kolkata.

Workshop/Training programmes:

One-day workshop on Natural Language Processing.

Two-day training programme on Web page design & Office Automation using Assamese.

1992-1996:

A Configurable Natural Language Interface for Robots

Co-Investigator: Dr.P. Bhanu Prasad, Ph.D.[U.K], Scientist E-II,

Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute, [CEERI], Pilani

Sponsored by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, Govt. of India. (CSIR Visiting Associateship) at the Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute, (CEERI), Pilani, India

The research yielded a natural language interface that can be used as an interface for commanding a number of robots using natural language. The complete interface was developed using Prolog. The interface is capable of analysing a robot command in natural language, extracting its syntactic and semantic content, resolving fuzziness and generating the relevant robot control signals for final execution of the task. It is reconfigurable in nature and can thus be easily modified to suit a variety of robots.

1997-1998: A Natural Language Interface for FAQ search

Sponsoring Agency: The Science & Engg. Research Council, SERC,

Department of Science & Technology, DST, Govt. of India

(SERC Visiting Fellowship)

Institution : Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, CAIR,

Defence Research & Development Organisation,

DRDO, Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India, Bangalore.