A control-theoretic model of speech production and recognition for use within prosthetic communication devices

北美有数百万人患有某种语言障碍。他们中的许多人都有正常的思维能力，能够处理语言，但他们缺乏对言语中使用的肌肉(如嘴唇和舌头)的正常控制，导致言语可能非常困难，甚至不可能理解。其他人也有认知障碍(例如，由阿尔茨海默病引起)，他们很难理解所说的话，很难记住正确的单词，也很难造出句子。我正在启动一个名为SPOCLab的新实验室，其目的是生产帮助残疾人交流的软件。我们的目标是改进语音识别的核心技术，并将该技术用于帮助人们日常生活的应用程序中。改善语音和语言障碍患者的语音识别将涉及从根本上改变目前进行语音识别的方式，因为现代语音识别根本不适用于非常不同的语音类型。我们进行语音识别的新方法将包括教计算机理解语音是如何物理产生的。例如，如果计算机知道说话者试图闭上嘴唇，那么就更容易分辨出map中的m音和nap中的n音。SPOCLab开发的高级语音识别将用于帮助人们进行交流。例如，我们将把难以理解的语音信号转换为更容易被人类听众理解的信号，我们将使用视频作为计算机应用程序的输入模式。这项技术可以对许多加拿大人产生巨大的积极影响，包括那些随着年龄的增长而丧失语言能力的加拿大人。

Millions of people in North America have some sort of speech disorder. Many of these have normal mental abilities and are able to process language, but they lack normal control over the muscles used in speech (such as the lips and tongue), resulting in speech that can be very difficult or even impossible to understand. Other individuals have cognitive disorders (for example, caused by Alzheimer's disease) where it becomes difficult to understand what is being said, to remember the right words, or to produce sentences.I am starting a new lab called SPOClab whose purpose is to produce software to help people with disabilities communicate. Our goal is to improve the core technology in speech recognition and to use that technology within applications that help people in their daily lives. Improving speech recognition for individuals with speech and language disorders will involve fundamentally changing the way speech recognition is done currently, because modern speech recognition simply doesn't work properly for very different kinds of speech. Our new way of doing speech recognition will involve teaching the computer to understand how speech is physically produced. For example, if the computer knows that the speaker tried to close their lips, it becomes easier to tell the 'm' sound in 'map' apart from the 'n' sound in 'nap'. The advanced speech recognition developed in SPOClab will be used to help people communicate. For example, we will transform hard-to-understand speech signals to be more intelligible to human listeners and we will use video as a mode of input to computer applications. This technology can have a tremendous positive impact for many Canadians, including those Canadians for whom a loss of linguistic abilities accompanies ageing.