SBIR Phase I: Say What I Feel

SBIR 第一阶段：说出我的感受

• 批准号: 1520587
• 负责人: Lois Brady
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: iTherapy LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-07-01 至 2015-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1520587&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Say; What; Feel

This SBIR Phase I project aims to create an emotionally expressive software-based speech-generating communication system, which is designed for individuals with little or no verbal communication ability -- particularly those with autism spectrum disorder. Current alternative communication technology does not offer the ability to express emotional content: something that is crucial to effective, comprehensible communication at home, in the community, and at work. The ability to convey emotions -- sadness, anger, or happiness, for example -- through one's tone of voice or facial expressions has far-reaching educational and vocational benefits for individuals with communication challenges. In other words, emotional content helps clarify the communicative intent behind a spoken message. When non-verbal individuals can communicate thoroughly and effectively, they increase their ability to receive a free and appropriate public education, and they expand their vocational opportunities. When individuals can receive an education and find a job, they can contribute back to society. The proposed work supports progress in science and engineering, yet it also enhances the potential for current educational applications and future research studies. Finally, this project builds on Federal and State efforts to offer people with disabilities educational and vocational services. This project will develop and combine novel software algorithms that target digital facial recognition patterns and speech-based waveforms, in order to enhance the emotional content of conversational communication for individuals who cannot speak volitionally. The ability to add emotional content onto synthesized speech is a new technology that could substantially benefit individuals with communication challenges, such as people with autism spectrum disorder. This project seeks to facilitate and augment emotional expression and, therefore, increase communicative competence for individuals who use software-based synthesized speech systems to express their ideas, feelings, and wishes. Measuring whether or not this project accurately conveys human emotion in speech and facial expressions requires a perceptual test involving neurotypical adults. Specifically, the perceptual test will include both trained and untrained judges. The purpose of this is to ensure that the facial expressions as well as the pitch contour and vocal emphasis align with the emotion labels (i.e., happy, sad, or mad). In order to accurately calculate the judges' inter-rater reliability, the study will use a method that determines the extent to which judges' ratings agree, relative to how much they would likely conform, if they were to randomly rate the same stimuli.

这个SBIR第一阶段项目旨在创建一个基于情感表达软件的语音生成通信系统，该系统专为很少或没有语言沟通能力的人设计-特别是那些患有自闭症谱系障碍的人。目前的替代通信技术不提供表达情感内容的能力：这对家庭，社区和工作中有效，可理解的沟通至关重要。通过一个人的语调或面部表情来传达情感的能力-例如悲伤，愤怒或快乐-对于有沟通障碍的人来说具有深远的教育和职业利益。换句话说，情感内容有助于澄清口头信息背后的沟通意图。当非语言的个体能够彻底有效地交流时，他们就能提高接受免费和适当的公共教育的能力，并扩大他们的职业机会。当个人能够接受教育并找到工作时，他们可以为社会做出贡献。拟议的工作支持科学和工程的进步，但它也提高了当前教育应用和未来研究的潜力。最后，该项目建立在联邦和各州为向残疾人提供教育和职业服务所做努力的基础上。该项目将开发和联合收割机新的软件算法，目标是数字面部识别模式和基于语音的波形，以增强个人谁不能说话的谈话交流的情感内容。将情感内容添加到合成语音中的能力是一项新技术，可以使患有自闭症谱系障碍的人等沟通困难的人受益匪浅。该项目旨在促进和增强情感表达，从而提高使用基于软件的合成语音系统来表达他们的想法，感受和愿望的个人的沟通能力。衡量这个项目是否准确地传达了人类的情感在语音和面部表情需要一个知觉测试涉及神经正常的成年人。具体而言，感知测试将包括受过训练和未经训练的法官。这样做的目的是确保面部表情以及音高轮廓和声音强调与情感标签（即，快乐、悲伤或疯狂）。为了准确计算评判员之间的可靠性，这项研究将使用一种方法来确定评判员的评分在多大程度上是一致的，如果他们随机对相同的刺激进行评分，相对于他们可能符合的程度。