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一个名为ModelTalker的连接文本到语音（TTS）合成系统和名为InvTool的软件，该软件指导个人创建个人合成语音，用于ModelTalker。整个系统旨在使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。除了提高自然度和可懂度外，ModelTalker和InvTool软件还独特地提供了快速开发个人拼接合成语音的能力。有了InvTool，像ALS患者这样有可能失去说话能力的人可以录制自己的语音，然后转换成个人合成语音，供ModelTalker TTS系统使用。这种语音银行功能已经被许多ALS患者成功使用。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的商业化转移。第二阶段的活动将集中在InvTool和自动构建高度可理解的个人合成语音的过程中。具体而言，我们第二阶段的具体目标是：目标1 -提高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）简化语音记录过程，特别是对于年轻用户和词汇量和识字技能有限的用户。目标2 -实现和测试新的语音处理技术，以提高我们的自动语音构建过程的鲁棒性，同时减少语音数据库所需的存储要求。目标3 -评估自动创建的语音的质量（可理解性和可接受性），这些语音是通过全国各地的多个语音诊所招募的，可以从这项技术中受益。在第二阶段完成时，我们将：a）开发一个文本到语音（TTS）系统，该系统可在所有主要的增强通信平台上使用; B）开发一个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）建立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的明确期望。