Personalized speech output for communication devices

通信设备的个性化语音输出

• 批准号: 7337320
• 负责人: H TIMOTHY Bunnell
• 金额: $ 42.15万
• 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 2010-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7337320
• 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

Project Summary 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.

项目摘要 该项目涵盖了串联文本到语音（TTS）合成系统的开发和测试 称为ModelTalker和称为Invtool的软件，它指导个人创建个人合成 与ModelTalker一起使用的声音。整个系统旨在特别引起增强性和 依赖语音综合进行通信的替代通信（AAC）用户。在 除了提高自然性和清晰度，ModelTalker和Invtool软件独特地提供了 个人串联综合声音快速发展的能力。与Invtool一起，诸如 那些有可能失去说话能力的ALS的人可以记录自己的演讲，以转换为 ModelTalker TTS系统的个人合成语音。该语音银行功能已经使用 许多ALS患者成功。 此II阶段的STTR应用程序寻求资金来完成ModelTalker和Invtool技术的转移 从开发到小型企业进行商业化的研究实验室。第二阶段 活动将集中于Invtool和自动构建高度可理解的个人的过程 ModelTalker的合成声音。特别是，我们对II期的具体目标是： 目标1»提高Invtool的可用性。我们已经确定了对Invtool的几个特定改进 （a）提高一般使用易用性的程序，（b）改善视力受损用户的可访问性，以及（c） 简化语音录制过程，尤其是对于词汇量更有限的年轻用户和用户 扫盲技能。 目标2`实施和测试新颖的语音处理技术以提高自动的鲁棒性 语音构建过程，同时减少语音数据库所需的存储要求。 AIM 3»评估自动创建声音的质量（清晰度和可接受性） 可以通过多次演讲招募的该技术受益的个人的代表性样本 全国各地的诊所。