Walter Kellermann (University Erlangen-Nuremberg), will give a guest lecture with the title

Current Challenges in Acoustic Signal Processing for Natural Human/Machine Interfaces

Since the very beginning of transmission and reproduction of audio signals, undistorted signal capture and immersive reproduction were always seen as crucial features of high quality. With the arrival of teleconferencing systems, immersive multichannel reproduction became part of telecommunication systems, and the according terminals developed into multi-functional human/machine interfaces, supporting not just telecommunication but also gaming, simulators, control consoles interactive home theatres and many other purposes. Along with increasingly powerful and cost-effective signal processing hardware, the according acoustic signal processing algorithms developed dramatically over the last decade striving for perfect solutions for the fundamental challenges of acoustic interfaces: Acoustic feedback from loudspeakers to microphones, noise and interfering sources, and reverberation in enclosures.

In this talk, we will shortly review the fundamental problems and then highlight some recent developments for massive multichannel reproduction, signal extraction, source localization, signal separation and dereverberation, and thereby point to applications in immersive reproduction, hearing aids, smartphones, and robot audition. We will also outline promising avenues for future research.