The Interactive Systems Lab at KIT and CMU focuses on technologies that facilitate the human experience, human mutual understanding and communication. Research ranges from speech recognition, translation, speech synthesis, language, vision technologies, person tracking and recognition, multi-modal and cross-modal perceptual interfaces, smart rooms and pervasive computing. Head of the Interactive Systems Lab is Prof. Alex Waibel.
Our laboratory is founding member of interACT. The international center for Advanced Communication Technologies is a joint center between eight of the leading universities in the field of computer science.
ISL has developed the first speech recognition system worldwide that works better than humans and is quicker than other AIs. See the press release in English and German.
On Oct 16, KIT will welcome its new students. As service for foreign students we will present our automatic simultaneous translation service during the life-stream of the so called "orientation phase". Follow the translation on lecture-translator.kit.edu
Prof. Alex Waibel together with Dr. Sebastian Stüker, kites GmbH, will present the simultaneous automatic translation during the InnovationFestival@karlsruhe_digital on Oct. 16, 2020. Further information... and Livestream (talk simultaneous translation at 4:26)
Prof. Alex Waibel together with Dr. Sebastian Stüker will present their automatic simultaneous translation service at the Hightech-Summit on Oct. 01. Follow the event in the life-stream. Further info...
The next "International Conference on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT)" will take place in Bangkok on August 05 & 06, 2021. As in 2020 IWSLT is an official workshop of ACL, further info...
History, application, approaches, evaluation, metrics, models, data: Get a unique and comprehenisve overview on Machine Translation on Coursera.
All lectures held by ISL will start as planned in the university calendar. All information under lectures...
On July 09 and 10 the 17th International Conference on Spoken Language (IWSLT) will take place as official workshop of ACL in Seattle. The workshop will take place as online conference.
Sebastian Stüker was invited to present "Communicating with Everybody: Going the Extra Mile toward Automatic Simultaneous Interpretation for All" on the international conference "Language Technologies for All", Enabling Lingusitic Diversity and Multilingualism Worldwide, UNESCO Headquaters, Paris, Dec. 4-6, 2019
Alex Waibel recieved the ICMI Sustained Accomplishment Award at the 2019 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction in Suzhou (Shanghai) China the 15-17 October. The Sustained Accomplishment Award is awarded each year at ICMI to a senior scientist who has made innovative, long-lasting, and influential contributions to the field of multimodal/multimedia interaction. Further information...
Dr. Stefan Kaufmann is member of the German Parliament and member of the committee on education, research and technology assessment. He visited KIT on October 09. Dr. Sebasitan Stüker presented to him our automatic simultaneous translation system.
On July 30, 2019 Prof. Dr. Jana Koehler, the new head of the German Center for AI (DFKI) visited KIT. After a presentation of KIT, followed by technical discussions, a lab tour to the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics was done. The work of the humanoid robotics lab was presented and Dr. Sebastian Stüker showed the simultaneous speech translation in action.
KIT's Center for Technology-Enhanced Learning presents the "Digital People". Follow the latest interview with Prof. Alex Waibel (in German only)...
Artificial Intelligence - what's next? Listen to the interview with Alex Waibel (campus report, in German only).
On July 10, 2019 we will present our Lecture Translator in action:
Visit us @ stand 12, KIT, Audimax, foyer
Talk by Dr. S. Stüker on Breaking the Language Barrier (2pm, A)
Live translation for foreign guests
The Lecture Translator was successfully offered as service for foreign participants at the annual celebration of KIT on May 16, 2019. All presentations, talks and discussions were translated from German to English. Prof. Alex Waibel discussed visions, chances and risks of Artificial Intelligence, more information….
Interested in "hacks"? Join the "Hacktival" at ZKM in Karlsruhe on May 11&12, 2019. Alex Waibel is member of the jury and more info can be found here....
We are proud to present the Lecture Translator at this years Hannover Messe!
Visit us @ Halle 2!
The 15th IWSLT took place in the Grand Hotel Casselbergh, Bruges on Oct. 29-30, 2018. What has began as a small workshop has since grown into an important international evaluation campaign, followed by a two-day workshop. Happy birthday IWSLT!
September 05, the French Academy of Science and the German Leopoldina jointly organised the "Robotics AI Symposium" in the in the prestigious building of the Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca, Paris. Alex Waibel gave ta talk on "Where Mind and Matter Meet". Further info....
KIT won the German prize "MINTernational innovativ" in Berlin on June 28, 2018 for its leading work on internationalisation, where ISL's lecture translator plays a leading role in. Further information (in German)...
"Intelligent Systems and a Language Transparent World" was the title of Prof. Waibel's open lecture @ SAP Next-Gen on June 19, 2018, where about 100 participated discussed the future of language and translation.
"Artificial Intelligence" was the topic of the Masterclass @ ARTE on June 15, 2018. Alex Waibel was invited for a keynote on "Machine Intelligence and a Language Transparent World".
In May Prof. Alex Waibel hold two keynotes at international conferences in Asia:
On May 15 IWSDS in Singapore on "M3 Dialgos - Multimodal, Multilingual, Multiparty" and at GAITC in Beijing, China on May 19.
Alex Waibel held a keynote on "Toward a Language Transparent World" on the International Annual Meeting on Computer-Assisted Translation and Terminology at the United Nations Office at Geneva on May 08, 2018.
On March 21, 2018 Prof. Alex Waibel received the certificate by the Leopoldina, one of the oldest academies of science in the world. Prof. Waibel is part of "class 1 - Mathematics, natural science and engineering".
Inside the ZKM, the „open codes exhibit“, the hackathon a sort of inventor competition, takes place. Join the hackathon on the weekend, learn about apps, get in touch with the teams and the jury
On the Symposium organized by Leopoldina on „Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning“, to be held on March 22, 2018 Prof. Waibel will give a lecture on: Intelligent Systems Breaking the Language Barrier. All interested are Kindly invited, please register see link
During the official ceremony on March 21, Prof. Dr. Alex Waibel will receive his certificate by the Leopoldina. Please register for the event and the following lecture on „the architecture of the internet - trends and risks“ by Prof. Anja Feldmann see link
Prof. Alex Waibel was invited by the European Parliament to present the automatic simultaneous lecture translation system @ the "European Parliament Administrative Innovation Day", January 12, 2018, Brussels.
The 15th International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) will take place in Bruges, Belgium, on Oct. 30-31, 2018 - save the date!
The 14th International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation took place at Waseda University, Japan on Dec. 14-15, 2017. Further information...
At "Translating and the Computer", to be held in London on November 16&17, 2017, Alex Waibel gave a keynote on "Breaking down language barriers". Further information...
Alex Waibel was invited to give a keynote with the title "A Language Transparent Society" at Meta Forum 2017 in Brussels. Further information....
On October 12, 2017 (10.00-12.00am) KIT welcomes its new international students. The Lecture Translator is our welcome gift for all newcomers and will be presented during the welcome-event in the Audimax (further info...) - come and join us!
Alex Waibel will give a keynote on "Multilingual and Multimodal Assistants and Mediators" @ the 5th International Conference on Human-Agent-Interaction, to be held in Bielefeld, Germany on Oct. 17-20, 2017
On Sep. 30. the „International Translation Day“ takes place. ISL and his team in project „QT21“ have won several machine translation tasks at WMT 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark (detailed results...). ISL's machine translation is also part of the lecture translation system.
CLICS and interACT offer a student exchange program, next deadline for application is on Nov. 27, 2017. Do your final thesis in one of the best labs worldwide. Further info on CLICS and on interACT...
We presented our simultaneous machine translation on June 30, 2017 within the open door day at KIT's campus north. About 35.000 people visited the open door day!
The German Rector's Conference (HRK) will award Prof. Alex Waibel "Ehrensenator" on Monday, June 26, 2017. Further information on HRK-web
Alex Waibel was invited to discuss the "The next generation internet - a key priority of the future" during the "Digital Assembly", organized by the European Commission in Malta on June 15-16, 2017. Follow the discussion via web stream....
On March 15, 2017 Prof. Alex Waibel was elected to the Leopoldina, one of the oldest academies of science in the world. It is dedicated to the advancement of science for the benefit of humankind and to the goal of shaping a better future. With some 1.500 members, the Leopoldina brings together outstanding scientists from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many other countries.
On April 21 Dr. Sebastian Stüker was invited by the "Goethe Institut Poland" to present new technologies in automatic speech recognition and machine translation, followed by a discussion with about 50 participants, further information...
On April 18 the welcoming event for students from abroad took place in the Audimax, followed by an exhibition in the foyer. We presented our welcome gift to the students: Automatic simultaneous translation of lectures by the lecture translator!
The report (Authors: Mark Seligman, Alex Waibel and Andrew Joscelyne) provides an overview of S2S translation technologies for everyone who is working in the translation field. Further information / download....
You want to do your final thesis in one of the best research labs worldwide? Apply for the interACT-exchange until May 15, 2017. Further information...
Follow the "Translation Technology Webinar" Alex Waibel hold on Feb. 01, 2017 on Speech to Speech Translation .
The 14th "International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation, IWSLT" will take place in Tokyo, Japan on De. 14 & 15, 2017 - further information...
IWSLT 2016 took place at Microsoft Research, Seattle, Redmond from Dec. 08-09, 2016. Further information, program, presentations, papers,... on the IWSLT2016-website...
"Challenges in Automatic Speech Recognition" was the title of CLICS' first winter school, which took place in Seattle from Dec. 04-09, 2016. See program here...
"The use of MT at universities" was the topic of Alex Waibel's keynote @ the 2nd ELRC Conference, Brussels, Oct. 26. On the "Translating Europe Forum 2016", organised on Oct. 27&28 by the European Commission, Prof. Waibel presented in the "Tech-lab" during the hands-on sessions with experts his simultaneous automatic translation as tools to help with translations.
How to get abroad during my studies? The event: "Studying computer science - going abroad" will inform about all possibilities to study in a foreign country, including interACT. Join us on October 26, 2016, 5.30 pm, Bldg. 50.34, KIT.
We could gain high level speakers from research, industry and politics for our symposium: Building Bridges - Breaking Barriers, to be held on July 14 and 15 in Baden-Baden. See the detailed program or spot the symposium in 10 minutes (video)
The META Prize is awarded by the META Technology Council to outstanding products or services supporting the European Multilingual Information Society. In 2016 interACT was awarded for its outstanding and innovative contributions to cross-lingual and multilingual communication technologies. further information....
CLICS - the thematic network funded by the DAAD, participated in the international conference "Going Forward - Strategic Partnerships as a Driver for Internationalisation" in Berlin on April 18, 2016. The picture shows CLICS leader Prof. Alexander Waibel, Dr. Anette Pieper (DAAD), and Dr. Patti McGill Peterson (Presidental Advisor, Global Initiatives, Center for Internationalisation and Global Engagement, American Council on Education)
There will be a special issue of MT Journal on the topic of Spoken Language Translation. Deadline for paper submission is July 15, 2016. Call for papers see here....
Building Bridges - Breaking Barriers is the topic of the international symposium on the occasion of interACT's 25th birthday. We will celebrate in Baden-Baden, Germany on July 14-16, 2016. For further information please visit the event-web under www.interact25.org
Following Alex Waibel's invited talk at the annual meeting of Leopoldina in September 2014, Leopoldina just published his talk in the Nova Acta Leopoldina with the title: Breaking the language barrier: Utopia or Reality? The article in German (English version follows)....
Invitation for KIT's students: Explore our lab, join our hands-on demonstrations, learn about our research and projects: All interested students are invited to our lab (Bldg. 50.20) on June 22, starting at 3.30pm
Learn about the different possibilities to study abroad: interACT presents its possibilities to do you final thesis in the best labs worldwide. Join the event organised by KIT's computer science departement, Bldg, 50.34, June 17, 2015, 5pm
The 12th Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam on December 03-04, 2015. More information...
The IEEE Board of Directors elevated Prof. Alex Waibel to IEEE Fellow, effective 1 January 2015, for his contributions to neural network based speech recognition and translation and multimodal interface, further information...
Olga Cosmidou, Directorate-General for Interpretation and Conference in the European Parliament, hold an invited talk at IWSLT 2014 in Lake Tahoe, USA on "Quality assurance in multilingual conference interpreting - the European Parliament experience".
The Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BMW AG, Prof. Joachim Milberg visited KIT and the IAR. During his lab visit we presented the simultaneous automatic speech translation system to Prof. Milberg and the KIT-delegation.
The Lecture Translator offers in the winter semester 2014/2015 about 20 lectures, simultaneously and automatically translated - follow the lectures on http://www.lecture-translator.kit.edu!
The 11th International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) will take place in South Lake Tahoe on December 04-05, 2014. Save the date...
A delegation from Changzhou, Province of Jiangsu, China, visited the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics on Oct. 16, 2014. After the presentations on KIT, the Institute and the Province, a lab-tour was organised to the robotics lab and a demonstration of the simultaneous translation of university lectures.
KIT's expert team has a new member: Prof. Alex Waibel is KIT's contact in the field of speech recognition, language processing, speech translation, multimodal and perceptual user interfaces and neural networks. See his profile on the KIT's experts page.
ISL presents its automatic simultaneous speech translation system to the young participants of the exhibiton "Lust auf Technik", to be held in Stuttgart, Germany on November 20-23. Visit us and explore our system! Further information....
"Perception and Control: Sensory systems in biology and engineering" is the topic of the annual assembly of the academy of science, which will be held in Rostock, Germany on September 19-21, 2014. Alex Waibel was invited to give a talk on "A World without Language Barriers: Utopia or Reality?". Further information...
The 11th IWSLT will take place in South Lake Tahoe, California Nevada on Dec. 4-5, 2014. More information: IWSLT 2014 website
Prof. Alex Waibel was awarded the Antonio Zampolli prize. The European Language Resources Association (ELRA) gives the prize for outstanding contributions to the advancement of language resources and language technology evaluation within human language technologies. The prize was handed over at LREC 2014 during the official ceremony on Friday, May 30, 2014. Further information...
Prof. Satoshi Nakamura, NAIST will held an interACT seminar on
Information Theory: Source Coding
We kindly invite all students and faculty to his lecture, to be given at KIT on June 3-6, 2014, 05.00 - 06.30 pm, Bldg. 50.20, Room 223 (Adenauerring 2)
Same procedure as every year: We kindly invite all students to our lab on June 02, 2014, 4pm. Explore our work, see our demos, talk to Prof. Waibel and to all our collegues - we are looking forward to welcoming you in our lab (Bldg. 50.20, KIT Campus South).
ISL showed its lecture translator at the annual reception of KIT on March 20, 2014. The guests explored our service for our students live during the exhibition. More infos....
Prof. Stefan Riezler, Heidelberg University hold a lecture on "Theoretical and Practical Grounding in Empirical Computational Linguistics" @ ISL on February 11, 2014. Further information...
On Feb. 07, 2014 we had the pleasure of the visit of a high level delegation from NAIST in order to discuss the future collaboration in interACT
"Bridges Across the Language Divide" presents his news at ICT 2013 in Vilnius in a booth and a networking session! Further information…
Dr. Alex Fraser, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München hold a lecture on "Improving Translation to Morpholgically Rich Languages" at ISL on July 10, 2013. Further information…
Alex Waibel gave a key note on "Multi- und Cross-lingual Robotic Assistants" at ICRA 2013 in Karslruhe.
Prof. Alex Waibel presented EU-BRIDGE and in particular its use-case "simultaneous translation of university lectures" to EU-Commissioner Neelie Kroes at CeBIT in Hannover on March 05, 2013.
ISL will show the simultaneous automatic translation of lectures at CeBIT 2013. You will find us in the CeBIT-lab (hall 9) at the KIT-booth. For further information see the lecture translator at CeBIT-web
Status and future of speech technologies are discussed during the German Speechtechnologyday, held in Berlin on January 24-25, 2013. Prof. Alex Waibel presented "Socially Aware Ineractive Assistants" and participated in the panel discussion where the German part in the speechtechnology was discussed. A poster on ISL's multilingual technologies showed ISL's research and milestones. For further information can be found on the page of the organiser, meta-net...
The 10th International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) will take place in the castle of Heidelberg on Dec. 05-06, 2013. IWSLT-2013-web-site
Jan Niehues and Alex Waibel won the "IWSLT 2012 Best Paper Award" with their paper entitled: Continuous Space Language Models using Restricted Boltzmann Machines
The International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) is a yearly scientific workshop, associated with an open evaluation campaign on spoken language translation, where both scientific papers and system descriptions are presented. The 9th IWSLT takes place at the interACT-partner HKUST, Hong Kong on Dec. 6-7, 2012. More information...
Prof. Alex Waibel presented the automtic simultaneous lecture translation technology at the European Parliament on the conference: „New Technologies and Education for Multilingualism going Global“ (October 18 and 19, 2012). Follow his talk „Simultaneous Machine Interpretation – Utopia?“ via the live stream from October 19, 09.30am
More Information ...
On Oct. 11, 2012 Alex Waibel gave a guest talk "Breaking the Language Barrier" @ the ShanghAI lectures. Follow the lecture and the simulteneous translation by machine via the webcast:
On June 11, 2012 we have introduced the First Simultaneous Translation Service by Computer.
Follow the presentaion via the live-stream
The Nara Institute of Science and Technology is the eight interACT-partner. NAIST-president Akira Isogai and KIT-president Horst Hippler signed the agreement on April 09, 2012 at NAIST, Japan
Luxembourg, Feb. 6-7: Official kick-off EU-BRIDGE. The 11 partners will develop above state-of-the art speech and machine translation capabilities in view of new and more challenging business us cases. Further info under:
ISL will present it’s open domain speech translation system at the AAAS Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Feb. 16-20, 2012.
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/future_mtgs/The KIT-Focus Anthropomatics and Robotics" will be presented at the next "KIT im Rathaus" in Karlsruhe, on January 17, 2012, beginning at 6.30 pm. Further information under http://www.zak.kit.edu/2757.php
ISL presented it's research fields to the new students of computer science during the "Fakultätentag 2011". Warm welcome to all new students and the invitation to always stop by our lab to gather more information!
Evaluation and registration is now open for the 11th international workshop on speech translation, to be held in San Francisco on Dec. 8-9, 2011. Further information under: www.iwslt2011.org
Jibbigo received the European Meta Prize for outstanding mobile voice translators bringing speech translation to mobile devices. Awarded by the Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance (META), the prize was handed over to Prof. Alex Waibel in Budapest on June 28, 2011.
Three times best results in three speech pairs: Alex Waibels team received outstanding results in the most important evaluation for European Languages: On the 6th Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation 2011.