1996 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Development of a bi-directional speech conversion system for speech communication of the hearing impaired
| Project/Area Number |
07650439
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
情報通信工学
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| Research Institution | Kumamoto University |
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Principal Investigator |
UEDA Yuichi Kumamoto Univ., Faculty of Eng., Associate Proc., 工学部, 助教授 (00141961)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
IKEDA Takashi Kurume national college of Tech., Associate Rrof., 助教授 (80222884)
WATANABE Akira Kumamoto Univ., Facuty of Eng., Professor, 工学部, 教授 (50040382)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1995 – 1996
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| Keywords | Hearing impaired / Communication / Speech conversion / Cepstrum / Hearing aid processing / Degraded speech / Speed conversion / Voice quality conversion |
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| Research Abstract |
Brief summary is as follows.
・Speech translation method based on the Cepstral analysis/synthesis
This method consists on a spectral level compression for the sensori-neural hearing impaired, a speed conversion of speech for the elder hearing impaired, and a pitch conversion. Therefore,
・Construction of the evaluation system which consists on a PC and an I/O board.
In the system, a subject can select any processing and control those parameters viewing the menu on the PC display.
・Optimal parameters setting.
It is important to define the relationship between the pitch conversion coefficients and the compression/expansion rate on the spectral frequency in such re-synthetic speech including voice pitch conversion. So, we investigated those relations in the experiments using the evaluation system.
・Proposal of the pitch period control method.
Degradations of speech qualities may occur in the higher pitch conversion. So, we proposed a new pitch control method based on the re-sampling and the all-pass filters.
In the whole study, we could not realize the bi-directional communication system. However, the proposed speech translation method can be applied to recover the degraded speech uttered by a hearing impaired person also. In future, we will try to investigate such recovering formulations and construct the communication system.
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