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Visitors to the EuroDisney theme park near Paris are playing a new
generation of video games, developed by IBM and the Disney organisation,
that could eventually have serious industrial and commercial applications.
The games, which include a picture manipulation system called photomorphing
and voice recognition technology, are housed in a new pavilion called
L’Astroport Services Interstellaires which opened to the public last week.

The technology used in L’Astroport won’t be found in your local games
arcade. The games are controlled by 37 computers, most of them IBM PS/2
personal computers. Eight machines use Intel’s new Pentium chip, a 32-bit
processor up to five times more powerful than machines using Intel 80486
processors.

Much of the technology was developed at five IBM research laboratories in
the US, France and Britain by a work team consisting of 40 IBM engineers and
Walt Disney’s software development group. Jack Jacquet, IBM France’s project
leader, says: ‘We wanted to show that computers can be used for more than
just spreadsheets. But we also wanted to develop a system that would appeal
to all ages and nationalities.’ It was a tall order, given that people from
85 nationalities visit EuroDisney each year.

L’Astroport includes eight photomorphing games stations powered by Pentium
chips. ‘Morphing’, a technique put to good effect in the film Terminator 2,
uses software to transform one photographic image seamlessly into another –
turning a car, for example, into a horse. The L’Astroport system takes a
high-definition photograph of its user, and digitises and stores it as a
500-kilobyte file. The digitised image is then displayed on a 94-centimetre
screen containing an array of touch and pressure detectors. Touching the
screen makes the image as malleable as plasticine: the user can alter it in
real time, for example widening the mouth or lengthening the nose. Users can
also – for a price – have their altered images printed on a colour printer.

Also on show is N-Grid, an interactive game incorporating IBM’s speech
server system (ISSS). Each ISSS is powered by a RS/6000 RISC workstation and
can recognise up to 30 words in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish.
IBM claims that the system is at least 98 per cent accurate, even in noisy
environments.

An ISSS works by breaking word sounds into small components called models,
which are stored on a 1-gigabyte hard disc. Anything the user says is
digitised and compared with the stored models. Unlike most voice
recognition systems, this does not need to be trained to recognise
individual voices; users are, however, are restricted in their choice of
words.

N-Grid first asks users to say hello in their own language: from the reply
it determines which set of models to use. It then guides them through a
series of questions which only require one-word answers: for instance, ‘Are
you ruled by your head or your heart?’ and ‘Can you make your mind up
quickly?’ At the end, it provides a flattering personality profile based on
the answers.

Communication problems are overcome by a number of tricks. If the user
mumbles or gives an incoherent response, the computer says: ‘I heard you
say something, was it . . .?’ It can also deal with words which it does not
recognise. If you reply ‘fish’ to the question ‘Which pet do you prefer, a
cat or a dog?’, N-Grid will ask ‘Did you say dog?’ to elicit a ‘yes’ or
‘no’. If the user refuses to speak, the computer observes ‘We have a
communication problem. We are fading . . .’ and shuts down.

EuroDisney expects more than 7 million people to visit L’Astroport each
year. IBM says there are serious motives behind its development. ‘People
think that IBM is a cold, unfriendly company, but we want people to see that
we are more friendly’, says Jacquet. Guy Serrana, leader of the IBM
technical support group, says that the technology has potential for more
serious applications: ‘Photomorphing could be used for identification
purposes or tracking down missing persons. The voice recognition technology
could be used in industry; for example, if you wanted to stop a machine in
an emergency you could shout ‘halt’ rather than trying to find the right
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In all, the games at L’Astroport took 180 man-years to develop. Neither
company will comment on development costs.