May 21, 2008 VVDIVA Group Meeting Minutes

Present: Sid Fels, Edgar Flores, Eric Foxall, Ko Hachimura, Allison Lenters, Zoe McDougall, Bob Pritchard, Marguerite Witvoet, Ying Yin

Meeting times:

	Meetings have been moved to alternate Wednesdays at 11:00 in Room 2101 of the Forestry Bldg. [Lavana has sent out the schedule for the summer.]

Status of Project Manager:

	Sid reported that Ananya Misra had visited on May 13 for interviews and tours. She also gave a presentation dealing with her software package TAPESTREA. //

Her fiance has been investigating the possibility of work positions here in Vancouver. Sid has asked Ananya to make a decision regarding the position by the end of this month.

	Sid has also received another application for the position, this one from Blaise Potard. Blaise has significant experience with articulatory synthesis techniques, working at LORIA in Nancy, France and the Speech Research Centre in Edinburgh.

Reports from:

	Allison: The new file structure for handling the training data is developing. Currently there are two main sections, the Accent and the Data. (see outline on wiki). Allison gave an explanation of the different fields and arrays contained in the structure. There followed a discussion about other data that should/could be included.
	Ying: Ying is currently redesigning the input architecture to handle the training and performance data. [She has also significantly improved the responsiveness of the system.]
	Eric: has completed the TouchGlove wrist connector and the connect box. He is sourcing piezo speakers and will be meeting with Hélène on Friday.

Software updates:

	Xcode: Sid has updated Allison’s code so she can compile.
	Max/MSP/Jitter: Bob and Sid will order upgrades for the lab.
	MatLab: Allison’s version is sufficient for now.

Installation of working system for linguistics lab: non-learning version

	Ying sent Bob a more stable, working system that Bob will place in the Linguistics lab this week.

Zoe and documentation: Zoe will send out an email to group members to set up interviews and demos for her documentation.

Backups to server: Bob will remind Sid to set this up.

Documentation of work: Bob asked the programming team to try to write short paragraphs each week outlining what they had accomplished. This is for documentation, time-lining, future development, and future grant applications.

Edgar has finished the new mechanical jaw and needs to add a mask and then mount it on a base. He is fitting a temporary skull and neck to it and will demo it at the next meeting.

Sid went over the different components of the mobile version of the DIVA. We appear to be ahead of schedule on the development of the training components. As a result, once Eric finishes the hardware components he can begin work on the basic visual mapping. This will also tie in with Edgar’s work.

Following a seemingly innocuous question from Allison, Sid and Marguerite discussed the approach to training from the perspective of starting with isolated phonemes and moving to phonemes in context with various degrees of randomness.

Demos for next meeting: DIVA 1: creating a profile

	2: adding some sessions
	3: creating an accent
	4: talking

JAW: Edgar’s mounted jaw.