Personalized speech output for communication devices

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目包括开发和测试称为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用于ModelTalker的个人合成声音。整个系统旨在使依赖语音合成进行通信的辅助和替代通信（AAC）设备用户特别感兴趣。除了提高自然度和可理解性外，ModelTalker和InvTool软件还独特地提供了快速开发个人连接合成声音的能力。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ModelTalker TTS系统的个人合成语音。这种语音银行功能已经被许多ALS患者成功使用。这个第二阶段的STTR申请寻求资金来完成ModelTalker和InvTool技术从研究实验室的转移，在这个实验室中，它被开发成一个商业化的小企业。第二阶段的活动将集中在InvTool和为ModelTalker自动构建高度可理解的个人合成语音的过程上。特别地，我们在第二阶段的具体目标是：目标1 -增强InvTool的可用性。我们已经确定了对InvTool程序的几项具体改进，这些改进将(a)提高总体易用性，(b)改善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 -实现和测试新的语音处理技术，以提高自动语音构建过程的鲁棒性，同时减少语音数据库的存储需求。目标3 -评估自动生成声音的质量（可理解性和可接受性），这些声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的有代表性的个人样本。在第二阶段完成后，我们将a)开发一个可用于所有主要增强通信平台的文本到语音（TTS）系统，b)开发一个可分发的软件和硬件包，用于自动个人合成语音构建，以及c)对该技术的潜在用户可以期望通过他们的个人合成语音获得的合成语音质量建立明确的期望。

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.