A study on an emotion model for prosody control and dialog management in speech communication

在这个科研项目中，实现了一个能够处理情感的会话系统，其研究对象是1)关于情感话语的口语表达，2)关于对话管理中情感的建模。在本项目中获得了以下结果：1)合成语音的情感表达。我们的研究对象不仅包括情感的种类，还包括情感的强弱程度。将“喜”、“忧”、“怒”、“惧”四种情绪作为情感的一种，通过收集和分析情绪话语的韵律特征，在控制情绪水平的情况下合成表达性言语。控制规则是在对得到的韵律参数进行线性建模的基础上制定的。评价实验采用合成语音进行。因此，可以通过限制情绪的种类来实现情绪强度的控制。在控制音高特征的情况下，“悲伤”和“恐惧”的表现相对较好。2)对话管理中的情绪建模当将情绪表达的处理运用到人与机器的对话中，通过猜测对方的情绪来实现高级的通信功能。它提出了一个心灵的工程模型。从“自己的内在环境”、“自己的来自他人的内在环境”和“自己的来自他人的外在环境”三个角度对心智模型中的知识表示进行了定义，情感将其定位为一个内在环境的参数。在此基础上，设计了基于综合推理技术的猜测方法，作为大脑模型中他人识别的处理技术。

In this scientific research project, it was achieved that a conversational system can process the emotion, and the object was 1) concerning the spoken expression of the emotional utterances and 2) concerning the modeling emotions in a dialog management. The following results were obtained in this project.1) Emotional expression of synthetic speechNot only the kind of emotions but also the levels of their strength were our research targets. Four emotions, i.e., "Joy", "Sadness", "Anger", and "Fear" were taken up as a kind of feelings, and prosodic features of the emotional utterances were examined by collecting and analyzing it for synthesizing expressive speech with controlling the level of the emotion. The controlling rule war formulated on the basis of a linear modeling of obtained prosodic parameters. The evaluation experiment was conducted by a synthetic speech. As a result, emotional strength control can be realized with a limitation of the kinds of emotions. A relatively good performance was obtained for "sadness" and "fear" in case of controlling the pitch features.2) Modeling of emotions in dialog managementWhen the processing of the expression of emotion is taken to the conversation between human and machine, advanced communications function is achieved by guessing other's emotions. It proposed an engineering model of the mind. The knowledge representation in the model of the mind was defined from the viewpoint of "Own inner environment", "Own inner environment from others" and "Own external environment from others", and emotions located it with one parameter of an inner environment. Moreover, the guess method by the inference-by-synthesis technique was designed as a processing technique for the others recognition in the model of the mind.