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.

项目概要 该项目包括串联文本转语音 (TTS) 合成系统的开发和测试 称为 ModelTalker 的软件和称为 InvTool 的软件可指导个人创建个人合成 与 ModelTalker 一起使用的声音。整个系统旨在让增强和 依赖语音合成进行通信的替代通信 (AAC) 设备用户。在 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 快速开发个人拼接合成语音的能力。借助 InvTool，个人例如 那些有失去说话能力风险的 ALS 患者可以录制自己的讲话，以便将其转换为 ModelTalker TTS 系统的个人合成语音。该语音银行功能已被使用 许多 ALS 患者均取得了成功。 此第二阶段 STTR 申请寻求资金以完成 ModelTalker 和 InvTool 技术的转让 从研究实验室发展到商业化的小企业。第二阶段 活动将重点关注 InvTool 以及自动构建高度可理解的个人信息的过程 ModelTalker 的合成声音。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 的几项具体改进 计划将 (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有限的用户 识字技能。 目标 2 ¿ 实施和测试新颖的语音处理技术，以提高我们的自动语音处理系统的鲁棒性 同时减少了语音构建过程中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（清晰度和可接受性） 通过多次演讲招募的可以从这项技术中受益的个人的代表性样本 全国各地的诊所。