This book contains a selection of revised papers from the 4th Workshop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction (MLMI 2007), which took place in Brno, Czech Republic, during June 28-30, 2007. As in the previous editions of the MLMI series, the 26 chapters of this book cover a large area of topics, from multimodal processing and human-computer interaction to video, audio, speech and language processing. The application of machine learning techniques to problems arising in these ?elds and the design and analysis of software s- portingmultimodalhuman-humanandhuman-computerinteractionarethetwo overarching themes of this post-workshop book. The MLMI 2007 workshop featured 18 oral presentations-two invited talks, 14 regular talks and two special session talks-and 42 poster presentations. The participants were not only related to the sponsoring projects, AMI/AMIDA (http://www.amiproject.org) and IM2 (http://www.im2.ch), but also to other largeresearchprojects onmultimodalprocessingand multimedia browsing,such as CALO and CHIL. Local universities were well represented, as well as other European, US and Japanese universities, research institutions and private c- panies, from a dozen countries overall.

This book contains a selection of refereed papers presented at the 1st Wo- shop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction (MLMI 2004), held at the "Centre du Parc," Martigny, Switzerland, during June 21-23, 2004. The workshop was organized and sponsored jointly by three European projects, - AMI, Augmented Multiparty Interaction, http: //www.amiproject.org - PASCAL, Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modeling and Computational Learning, http: //www.pascal-network.org - M4, Multi-modal Meeting Manager, http: //www.m4project.org as well as the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR): - IM2: Interactive Multimodal Information Management, http: //www.im2.ch MLMI 2004 was thus sponsored by the European Commission and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Given the multiple links between the above projects and several related - search areas, it was decided to organize a joint workshop bringing together - searchers from the di?erent communities working around the common theme of advanced machine learning algorithms for processing and structuring mul- modal human interaction in meetings. The motivation for creating such a forum, which could be perceived as a number of papers from di?erent research dis- plines, evolved from a real need that arose from these projects and the strong motivation of their partners for such a multidisciplinary workshop. This asse- ment was indeed con?rmed by the success of this ?rst MLMI workshop, which attracted more than 200 participants.

This book provides a synthesis of the multifaceted field of interactive multimodal information management. The subjects treated include spoken language processing, image and video processing, document and handwriting analysis, identity information and interfaces. The book concludes with an overview of the highlights of the progress of the field during the past ten years, as well as the problems that are now under investigation and that offer the most promising results for the future. The book is addressed to the graduate student/postdoc level, but much of the book will be accessible to all those with a general background in information processing.