Microsoft Research India, MSIDC showcase innovations at TechXchange 2008

Microsoft Research India (MSR India) and Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC) has demonstrated more than 20 of their latest research projects, and products. The demonstrations are said to be at the cutting edge of technology, and in many cases, advance the state-of-the-art.

The demos were part of TechXchange 2008, the second edition of the forum established to enable deep integration between Microsoft’s researchers and product teams in India, and to build a platform that promotes innovation, collaboration and knowledge exchange.

TechXChange 2008 was held at the Microsoft Hyderabad Campus. Robust Location Search is an example of an area of collaboration between MSR India and MSIDC. Robust location search solves two key problems that arise when users search for addresses.

The project takes a radically new approach to location search by using keywords to find places, rather than commonly used address rules, to answer queries. This enables relevant results regardless of the address type and structure and also enables cross-lingual address searches. For example, an address specified as being ‘near NIMS’ with a building name in Hindi can be located by using Robust Location Search. This automatically identifies the building near Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad. This Robust Location Search started as a research project at MSR India, and is now being developed by MSIDC as a feature of the Live Search Maps service.

“TechXchange provides a great opportunity for our researchers and product groups to ideate about the next wave of innovations and technology. It is a platform that demonstrates the abundant talent and potential we have in India to become world leaders in technology,” said Dr P Anandan, Managing Director, MSR India.

According to Srini Koppolu, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director, MSIDC, “From India, we develop technologies and products for Microsoft that impact millions of customers across the world. I am very excited about the opportunity that this collaboration presents in bringing out some of the research ideas as features of next generation products. This annual event is playing an important role in further strengthening India’s position as a global R&D hub.”.

In addition to Robust Location Search, MSIDC and MSRI are also collaborating on some key areas such as software engineering, multilingual systems and security.