Personalized speech output for communication devices

通信设备的个性化语音输出

• 批准号: 7219783
• 负责人: H TIMOTHY Bunnell
• 金额: $ 41.79万
• 依托单位: AGORANET, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-05-15 至 2008-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7219783
• 关键词: Acoustics; Age; Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; Arts; Augmentative and Alternative Communication device; Businesses; Clinic; Code; Communication; Communication Aids for Disabled; Computer software; Country; Databases; Development; Facility Construction Funding Category; Funding; Individual; Label; Laboratory Research; Methods; Numbers; Output; Patients; Phase; Phonetics; Process; Range; Recruitment Activity; Risk; Sampling; Small Business Technology Transfer Research; Speech; System; Techniques; Technology; Testing; Text; Visual impairment; Vocabulary; Voice; alternative communication; base; commercialization; design; expectation; improved; insight; interest; literacy; novel; preference; programs; prospective; skills; sound; speech processing; usability

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project encompasses development and testing of a concatenative text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis system known as ModelTalker and software called InvTool which guides individuals in creating personal synthetic voices for use with ModelTalker. The overall system is intended to be of particular interest to Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device users who depend upon speech synthesis for communication. In addition to improved naturalness and intelligibility, the ModelTalker and InvTool software uniquely offer the capability of rapid development of personal concatenative synthesis voices. With InvTool, individuals such as those with ALS who are at risk of losing the ability to speak can record their own speech for conversion to a personal synthetic voice for the ModelTalker TTS system. This voice banking capability has already been used successfully by a number of ALS patients. This Phase II STTR application seeks funding to complete transfer of the ModelTalker and InvTool technology from the research laboratory in which it was developed to a small business for commercialization. Phase II activities will focus on InvTool and the process of automatically constructing highly intelligible personal synthetic voices for ModelTalker. In particular, our specific aims for Phase II are: Aim 1 - Enhance the usability of InvTool. We have identified several specific improvements to the InvTool program that will (a) improve general ease of use, (b) improve accessibility for visually impaired users, and (c) simplify the speech recording process, especially for young users and users with more limited vocabulary and literacy skills. Aim 2 - Implement and test novel speech processing techniques to improve the robustness of our automatic voice construction process while reducing the storage requirements needed for the speech database. Aim 3 - Evaluate the quality (intelligibility and acceptability) of automatically created voices for a representative sample of individuals who can benefit from this technology recruited through multiple speech clinics around the country. At the completion of Phase II, we will have a) developed a text-to-speech (TTS) system that is usable on all major augmentative communication platforms, b) developed a distributable software and hardware package for automatic personal synthetic voice construction, and c) established clear expectations for the quality of synthetic speech prospective users of this technology can expect to obtain with their personal synthetic voice.

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目包括开发和测试名为 ModelTalker 的串联文本到语音 (TTS) 合成系统和名为 InvTool 的软件，该软件指导个人创建与 ModelTalker 一起使用的个人合成声音。整个系统旨在让依赖语音合成进行通信的增强和替代通信 (AAC) 设备用户特别感兴趣。除了提高自然度和清晰度之外，ModelTalker 和 InvTool 软件还独特地提供了快速开发个人串联合成语音的功能。借助 InvTool，患有 ALS 等面临丧失说话能力风险的个人可以录制自己的语音，以便转换为 ModelTalker TTS 系统的个人合成语音。这种语音银行功能已被许多 ALS 患者成功使用。此第二阶段 STTR 申请寻求资金，以完成 ModelTalker 和 InvTool 技术从开发该技术的研究实验室向小型企业商业化的转移。第二阶段的活动将重点关注 InvTool 以及为 ModelTalker 自动构建高度可理解的个人合成声音的过程。特别是，我们第二阶段的具体目标是： 目标 1 - 增强 InvTool 的可用性。我们已经确定了 InvTool 程序的几项具体改进，这些改进将 (a) 提高总体易用性，(b) 提高​​视障用户的可访问性，以及 (c) 简化语音录制过程，特别是对于年轻用户和词汇量和读写能力有限的用户。目标 2 - 实施和测试新颖的语音处理技术，以提高自动语音构建过程的稳健性，同时减少语音数据库所需的存储要求。目标 3 - 评估自动创建的声音的质量（清晰度和可接受性），以代表可以从全国多个语音诊所招募的这项技术中受益的个人样本。在第二阶段完成时，我们将a）开发出可在所有主要增强通信平台上使用的文本转语音（TTS）系统，b）开发用于自动个人合成语音构建的可分发软件和硬件包，以及c）对该技术的潜在用户可以期望通过其个人合成语音获得的合成语音质量建立明确的期望。