HP Labs India, part of HP's global R&D network, has announced it is working on a couple of projects which might have a deep impact on how people access the power of computing.
In addition to these projects at the India centre, HP Labs globally is set to shortly announce enhanced printing solutions using the liquid electro-photography (LEP) technology for high-speed, offset-quality colour printing.
Said Ajay Gupta, HP Labs India Director: "Local language access to the IT infrastructure is one of the key areas we are working on and also on the area of how the existing broadcast network can be used to trigger a paradigm shift in data communication and how TV is being consumed. We are working on a couple of projects which will go into field trials within this year and then we will look at commercialisation."
Gupta, who recently took over from the much-acclaimed Dr S Ramani, said: "When the usage of IT increases and includes a larger user population, it becomes necessary to create vastly simpler user interfaces. Very simple interfaces are called for which will need necessary compromises with regard to the range of activities that can be carried out over these interfaces. A promising area in this regard is that of handwriting as an input modality besides the speech communication between users and computers."
He added that HP Labs' strategy in language technology is to focus on the multi-language problem, and make the underlying systems modular and easily extendable to another language.
"We will leverage the vast amount of research being done at universities and government labs and add value by making the language technologies practical for use in products," noted Gupta.
On using the existing broadcast network to extend communication among the masses, Gupta said that in emerging economies, it is too much to ask for a nationwide, high quality telecom infrastructure to support access to e-mail systems and Internet resources.
"In these economies, investments in communication follow rather than precede growth in demand, resulting in heavy loading of the available infrastructure at any given time. As a result, one has to focus on relatively unusual solutions to extend the reach of communications services. These include data communication over cable TV networks, DTH channels and the cellular telephone network," highlighted Gupta.
Added Richard H Lampman, senior VP, HP Labs: "There has been significant contributions from HP Labs India to the product ranges of HP. To support the ongoing initiatives here, we are ramping up our India plans aggressively which till recently had been on a rather slow mode."