Before a computer can act on behalf of a user, it needs to understand what the user wants. To facilitate this dialogue between humans and machines, researchers in the THESEUS program are developing new functions that can be deployed in different applications. Innovative algorithms make it possible to create multimodal user interfaces that can be controlled using speech, gestures and other inputs. Such interfaces allow users to formulate their queries intuitively and refine them through spoken dialogue with the system. A special component within the computer serves as an interface between the multimodal user interface and the various sources of metadata. It transforms a spoken query into the semantically appropriate data record required by the system for running a search.

THESEUS is also developing new graphic user interfaces to make it easier to identify the relationships between data, metadata and documents. For example, the results of a query can be presented in the form of a knowledge network, which shows how the search results are related to the search term as well as to one another. This provides users with a clear overview of the topic at hand and helps them to find the information they need more quickly.

Experts are assessing the quality of the basic technologies developed within the framework of THESEUS. New technologies for speech and image recognition and for the automatic classification of metadata are being tested to determine their reliability, functionality and suitability, in an effort to ensure that the research meets quality standards. The results of this evaluation are also taken into account in the research and development process, helping to further optimize end results.