Panasonic Corporation

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America

Takahiro Kamai

Yumiko Kato

Yoshifumi Hirose

Kenji Matsui

Natsuki Saito

Hideyuki Yoshida

Masakatsu Hoshimi

Noriyo Hara

Tomokazu Ishikawa

Shoichi Araki

Mikio Morioka

Kenji Mizutani

Katsuyoshi Yamagami

Yoshihisa Nakatoh

Tetsuji Mochida

Natsuki Saeki

Taketoshi Nakao

Kousuke Itakura

Misaki Doi

Ryo Ishida

Zhu Weizhong

A description support device for displaying information on a topic to be checked in an utterance by a user, the description support device includes: an inputter to acquire input information indicating an utterance sentence corresponding to the utterance; a controller to generate information indicating a check result of the topic for the utterance sentence; and a display to display information generated by the controller, wherein the display is configured to display a checklist indicating whether or not the topic is described in the utterance sentence indicated by the input information sequentially acquired by the inputter, and wherein the display is configured to display, according to a likelihood of each utterance sentence, display information including the utterance sentence, the likelihood defining the check result of the topic in the checklist.

Description support device and description support method

A training method of training a speaker identification model which receives voice data as an input and outputs speaker identification information for identifying a speaker of an utterance included in the voice data is provided. The training method includes: performing voice quality conversion of first voice data of a first speaker to generate second voice data of a second speaker; and performing training of the speaker identification model using, as training data, the first voice data and the second voice data.

Training method of a speaker identification model based on a first language and a second language

A translation device is configured to acquire utterance spoken by a speaker in a first language and translate contents of the utterance into a second language for information presentation, and includes an input unit, a controller, a notification unit, and a storage. The input unit acquires the utterance in the first language and generates voice data from the utterance. The controller acquires a first evaluation value. The notification unit presents the speaker with information on utterance reinput request. The notification unit presents first information on utterance reinput request when the first evaluation value is less than or equal to a first predetermined value. The controller generates new voice recognition data with reference to the past voice recognition data and voice recognition data of reinput utterance, when the voice recognition data of the reinput utterance has an evaluation value less than or equal to a predetermined value.

Translation device and system with utterance reinput request notification

The disclosure provides a sound collection apparatus in which a user can easily find a sound collection direction, and furthermore, can readily control the sound collection direction. A sound collection apparatus comprises: an operation unit capable of visually indicating one direction and three-dimensionally and sequentially varying the direction; a sound collection unit that provides directivity for sound collection; and a control unit. The control unit includes a direction detection unit for detecting a direction indicated by the operation unit. The control unit controls the collection directivity of the sound collection unit according to the direction detected by the direction detection unit. The sound collection unit includes a plurality of microphones. The control unit further includes a beam forming production unit for controlling a beam by a microphone array including the plurality of microphones according to the direction detected by the direction detection unit to vary collection sound directivity.

Sound collection apparatus

A voice quality conversion system includes: an analysis unit which analyzes sounds of plural vowels of different types to generate first vocal tract shape information for each type of the vowels; a combination unit which combines, for each type of the vowels, the first vocal tract shape information on that type of vowel and the first vocal tract shape information on a different type of vowel to generate second vocal tract shape information on that type of vowel; and a synthesis unit which (i) combines vocal tract shape information on a vowel included in input speech and the second vocal tract shape information on the same type of vowel to convert vocal tract shape information on the input speech, and (ii) generates a synthetic sound using the converted vocal tract shape information and voicing source information on the input speech to convert the voice quality of the input speech.

Voice quality conversion system, voice quality conversion device, voice quality conversion method, vocal tract information generation device, and vocal tract information generation method

A speech synthesis device includes: a mouth-opening-degree generation unit which generates, for each of phonemes generated from input text, a mouth-opening-degree corresponding to oral-cavity volume, using information generated from the text and indicating the type and position of the phoneme within the text, such that the generated mouth-opening-degree is larger for a phoneme at the beginning of a sentence in the text than for a phoneme at the end of the sentence; a segment selection unit which selects, for each of the generated phonemes, segment information corresponding to the phoneme from among pieces of segment information stored in a segment storage unit and including phoneme type, mouth-opening-degree, and speech segment data, based on the type of the phoneme and the generated mouth-opening-degree; and a synthesis unit which generates synthetic speech of the text, using the selected pieces of segment information and pieces of prosody information generated from the text.

Speech synthesis device and speech synthesis method

A strained-rough-voice conversion unit () is included in a voice conversion device that can generate a 'strained rough' voice produced in a part of a speech when speaking forcefully with excitement, nervousness, anger, or emphasis and thereby richly express vocal expression such as anger, excitement, or an animated or lively way of speaking, using voice quality change. The strained-rough-voice conversion unit () includes: a strained phoneme position designation unit () designating a phoneme to be uttered as a 'strained rough' voice in a speech; and an amplitude modulation unit () performing modulation including periodic amplitude fluctuation on a speech waveform. The amplitude modulation unit () generates, according to the designation of the strained phoneme position designation unit (), the &#x201c;strained rough&#x201d; voice by performing the modulation including periodic amplitude fluctuation on the part to be uttered as the &#x201c;strained rough&#x201d; voice, in order to generate a speech having realistic and rich expression uttering forcefully with excitement, nervousness, anger, or emphasis.

Strained-rough-voice conversion device, voice conversion device, voice synthesis device, voice conversion method, voice synthesis method, and program

A voice quality conversion device including: a target vowel vocal tract information hold unit holding target vowel vocal tract information of each vowel indicating target voice quality; a vowel conversion unit (i) receiving vocal tract information with phoneme boundary information of the speech including information of phonemes and phoneme durations, (ii) approximating a temporal change of vocal tract information of a vowel in the vocal tract information with phoneme boundary information applying a first function, (iii) approximating a temporal change of vocal tract information of the same vowel held in the target vowel vocal tract information hold unit applying a second function, (iv) calculating a third function by combining the first function with the second function, and (v) converting the vocal tract information of the vowel applying the third function; and a synthesis unit synthesizing a speech using the converted information.

Voice quality conversion device and voice quality conversion method for converting voice quality of an input speech using target vocal tract information and received vocal tract information corresponding to the input speech

A prosody generation apparatus capable of suppressing distortion that occurs when generating prosodic patterns and therefore generating a natural prosody is provided. A prosody changing point extraction unit in this apparatus extracts a prosody changing point located at the beginning and the ending of a sentence, the beginning and the ending of a breath group, an accent position and the like. A selection rule and a transformation rule of a prosodic pattern including the prosody changing point is generated by means of a statistical or learning technique and the thus generate rules are stored in a representative prosodic pattern selection rule table and a transformation rule table beforehand. A pattern selection unit selects a representative prosodic pattern from the representative prosodic pattern selection rule table according to the selection rule. A prosody generation unit transforms the selected pattern according to the transformation rule and carries out interpolation with respect to portions other than the prosody changing points so as to generate prosody as a whole.

Prosody generating devise, prosody generating method, and program

A speech analyzer includes a vocal tract and sound source separating unit which separates a vocal tract feature and a sound source feature from an input speech, based on a speech generation model, a fundamental frequency stability calculating unit which calculates a temporal stability of a fundamental frequency of the input speech in the sound source feature, from the separated sound source feature, a stable analyzed period extracting unit which extracts time information of a stable period, based on the temporal stability, and a vocal tract feature interpolation unit which interpolates a vocal tract feature which is not included in the stable period, using a vocal tract feature included in the extracted stable period.

Speech analyzer and speech analysis method

A voice emphasizing device emphasizes in a speech a 'strained rough voice' at a position where a speaker or user of the speech intends to generate emphasis or musical expression. Thereby, the voice emphasizing device can provide the position with emphasis of anger, excitement, tension, or an animated way of speaking, or musical expression of Enka (Japanese ballad), blues, rock, or the like. As a result, rich vocal expression can be achieved. The voice emphasizing device includes: an emphasis utterance section detection unit () detecting, from an input speech waveform, an emphasis section that is a time duration having a waveform intended by the speaker or user to be converted; and a voice emphasizing unit () increasing fluctuation of an amplitude envelope of the waveform in the detected emphasis section.

Voice emphasizing device and voice emphasizing method

The voice quality conversion apparatus includes: low-frequency harmonic level calculating units and a harmonic level mixing unit for calculating a low-frequency sound source spectrum by mixing a level of a harmonic of an input sound source waveform and a level of a harmonic of a target sound source waveform at a predetermined conversion ratio for each order of harmonics including fundamental, in a frequency range equal to or lower than a boundary frequency; a high-frequency spectral envelope mixing unit that calculates a high-frequency sound source spectrum by mixing the input sound source spectrum and the target sound source spectrum at the predetermined conversion ratio in a frequency range larger than the boundary frequency; and a spectrum combining unit that combines the low-frequency sound source spectrum with the high-frequency sound source spectrum at the boundary frequency to generate a sound source spectrum for an entire frequency range.

Voice quality conversion apparatus, pitch conversion apparatus, and voice quality conversion method

A speech separating apparatus includes: a PARCOR calculating unit that extracts vocal tract information from an input speech signal; a filter smoothing unit that smoothes, in a first time constant, the vocal tract information extracted by the PARCOR calculating unit; an inverse filtering unit that calculates a filter coefficient of a filter having a frequency amplitude response characteristic inverse to the vocal tract information smoothed by the filter smoothing unit, so as to filter the input speech signal using the filter having the calculated filter coefficient; and a voicing source modeling unit that cuts out, from the input speech signal filtered by the inverse filtering unit, a waveform included in a second time constant shorter than the first time constant, so as to calculate, for each waveform that is taken, voicing source information from the each waveform.

Speech separating apparatus, speech synthesizing apparatus, and voice quality conversion apparatus

An emotion recognition apparatus performs accurate and stable speech-based emotion recognition, irrespective of individual, regional, and language differences of prosodic information. The emotion recognition apparatus includes: a speech recognition unit which recognizes types of phonemes included in the input speech; a characteristic tone detection unit which detects a characteristic tone that relates to a specific emotion, in the input speech; a characteristic tone occurrence indicator computation unit which computes a characteristic tone occurrence indicator for each of the phonemes, based on the types of the phonemes recognized by the speech recognition unit, the characteristic tone occurrence indicator relating to an occurrence frequency of the characteristic tone; and an emotion judgment unit which judges an emotion of the speaker in a phoneme at which the characteristic tone occurs in the input speech, based on the characteristic tone occurrence indicator computed by the characteristic tone occurrence indicator computing unit.

Emotion recognition apparatus

This invention includes: a voice quality feature database () holding voice quality features; a speaker attribute database () holding, for each voice quality feature, an identifier enabling a user to expect a voice quality of the voice quality feature; a weight setting unit () setting a weight for each acoustic feature of a voice quality; a scaling unit () calculating display coordinates of each voice quality feature based on the acoustic features in the voice quality feature and the weights set by the weight setting unit (); a display unit () displaying the identifier of each voice quality feature on the calculated display coordinates; a position input unit () receiving designated coordinates; and a voice quality mix unit () (i) calculating a distance between (1) the received designated coordinates and (2) the display coordinates of each of a part or all of the voice quality features, and (ii) mixing the acoustic features of the part or all of the voice quality features together based on a ratio between the calculated distances in order to generate a new voice quality feature.

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Kyoto, Japan

Takahiro Kamai