Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Javier Latorre-Martinez

Vincent Ping Leung Wan

Roberto Cipolla

Kayoko Yanagisawa

Ioannis Stylianou

Langzhou Chen

Norbert Braunschweiler

Balakrishna Venkata Jagannadha Kolluru

Robert Arthur Blokland

Masami Akamine

Bjorn Stenger

Kean Kheong Chin

Mark John Francis Gales

Katherine Mary Knill

Robert Anderson

Bjorn Dietmar Rafael Stenger

Ranniery Da Silva Maia

Ranniery Maia

Byung Ha Chung

Neil Baker

A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice;

Computer generated emulation of a subject

An acoustic model is adapted, relating acoustic units to speech vectors. The acoustic model comprises a set of acoustic model parameters related to a given speech factor. The acoustic model parameters enable the acoustic model to output speech vectors with different values of the speech factor. The method comprises inputting a sample of speech which is corrupted by noise; determining values of the set of acoustic model parameters which enable the acoustic model to output speech with said first value of the speech factor; and employing said determined values of the set of speech factor parameters in said acoustic model. The acoustic model parameters are obtained by obtaining corrupted speech factor parameters using the sample of speech, and mapping the corrupted speech factor parameters to clean acoustic model parameters using noise characterization paramaters characterizing the noise.

Noise compensation in speaker-adaptive systems

A method of animating a computer generation of a head, the head having a mouth which moves in accordance with speech to be output by the head,

Computer generated head

A text-to-speech method for simulating a plurality of different voice characteristics includes dividing inputted text into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting voice characteristics for the inputted text; converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors using an acoustic model having a plurality of model parameters provided in clusters each having at least one sub-cluster and describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to a speech vector; and outputting the sequence of speech vectors as audio with the selected voice characteristics. A parameter of a predetermined type of each probability distribution is expressed as a weighted sum of parameters of the same type using voice characteristic dependent weighting. In converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors, the voice characteristic dependent weights for the selected voice characteristics are retrieved for each cluster such that there is one weight per sub-cluster.

Text to speech method and system using voice characteristic dependent weighting

A method of animating a computer generation of a head and displaying the text of an electronic book, such that the head has a mouth which moves in accordance with the speech of the text of the electronic book to be output by the head and a word or group of words from the text is displayed while simultaneously being mimed by the mouth, wherein input text is divided into a sequence of acoustic units, which are converted to a sequence of image vectors and into a sequence of text display indicators. The sequence of image vectors is outputted as video such that the mouth of said head moves to mime the speech associated with the input text with a selected expression, and the sequence of text display indicators is output as video which is synchronized with the lip movement of the head.

Synthetic audiovisual storyteller

A text-to-speech method configured to output speech having a selected speaker voice and a selected speaker attribute, including: inputting text; dividing the inputted text into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting a speaker for the inputted text; selecting a speaker attribute for the inputted text; converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors using an acoustic model; and outputting the sequence of speech vectors as audio with the selected speaker voice and a selected speaker attribute. The acoustic model includes a first set of parameters relating to speaker voice and a second set of parameters relating to speaker attributes, which parameters do not overlap. The selecting a speaker voice includes selecting parameters from the first set of parameters and the selecting the speaker attribute includes selecting the parameters from the second set of parameters.

Text to speech system

Growing community of inventors

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Javier Latorre-Martinez