Samsung’s Smart TV-Oriented Research Efforts Recognised With a Best Paper Award at ICCE 2021

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – 01 September 2021 – Researchers from Samsung’s Visual Display (VD) Business have been declared winners of a Best Paper Award at the IEEE’s (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE 2021) for their technical paper entitled “Analysing Images for Music Recommendation.”

ICCE is the flagship conference of the IEEE Consumer Technology Society (formerly the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society), held annually in conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, USA. A total of 190 research papers were accepted this year, with five finalists nominated for the virtual conference’s Best Paper Award. The competition consisted of video-recorded paper presentations and a live Q&A session, and just three papers were selected as winners.

“The work portrayed in this paper connects domains such as AI, UX and affective computing with the goal of providing an emotionally enriching user experience by bridging artworks and music in an unconventional manner,” said Anant Baijal, a Samsung Staff Engineer (Advanced R&D Group) and the lead author of the paper. “We propose a method that considers both an artwork’s style (classical, baroque, impressionist etc.) and the emotion it conveys (calm, joyful, mellow, etc.) to automatically curate music that is well-suited to accompany the image.”

The research highlighted in the paper is under review for possible commercialisation in Samsung’s flagship products, including the recently announced Neo QLED TVs, along with lifestyle products such as The Frame. Currently, through Ambient Mode on QLED and Art Mode on The Frame, consumers can display pictures of their choice when they are not watching TV. The research team wants to take the user experience to the next level by giving consumers the option to play music that is curated based on automatic analysis of the image displayed on the screen. The results obtained from initial tests conducted during the research support the efficacy of the proposed approach.

“When a user uploads a picture, such as artwork or a photograph, our proprietary AI algorithms evaluate the image to recommend music through a user-subscribed music streaming provider,” added Baijal. “Future work on this technology would include integrating other parameters into the algorithm, such as the weather, time, geolocation and user activity, in addition to the image being displayed. We are designing the algorithm to be capable of adapting to individual users’ preferences.”

“At Samsung’s Advanced R&D Group, we’re continually striving to provide a more dynamic screen experience by developing innovative technologies that complement consumers’ ever-changing lifestyles,” said Dr. Danny Hyun, Corporate Vice President and Head of Advanced R&D Group at Samsung Electronics and a co-author of the paper.

The Advanced R&D Group’s research spans multidisciplinary areas such as AI, Big Data and connectivity, and the Group is also responsible for creating futuristic concepts and product prototypes. Multiple international patent applications covering the technology’s concept, components and user scenarios have been filed by Samsung Electronics.

Check out Samsung’s First Look 2021 event (highlights available here) for more details on the company’s vision for the future of screens, including its latest display innovations and 2021 product line-up.