Abstract: 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; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A spoken dialogue system comprising: an input for receiving data relating to speech signals originating from a user, where the speech signals form part of a dialogue; an output for outputting information specified by an action; and a processor configured to: extract one or more acoustic features from the input speech signal; determine an action using a dialogue model, wherein the input to the dialogue model is generated using the input speech signal; output information specified by the action at the output; generate a success measure using the acoustic features.

Abstract: A speech intelligibility enhancing system for enhancing speech to be outputted in a noisy environment, the system comprising: a speech input for receiving speech to be enhanced; a noise input for receiving real-time information concerning the noisy environment; an enhanced speech output to output said enhanced speech; and a processor configured to convert speech received from said speech input to enhanced speech to be output by said enhanced speech output, the processor being configured to: apply a spectral shaping filter to the speech received via said speech input; apply dynamic range compression to the output of said spectral shaping filter; and measure the signal to noise ratio at the noise input, wherein the spectral shaping filter comprises a control parameter and the dynamic range compression comprises a control parameter and wherein at least one of the control parameters for the dynamic range compression or the spectral shaping is updated in real time according to the measured signal to noise ratio.

Abstract: A dialogue system including: an input receiving data relating to a speech or text signal originating from a user; and a processor configured to: update a system state based on the input data using a state tracker model, the system state including probability values associated with each of plural possible values for each of plural categories; identify one or more relevant categories based on at least part of the updated system state information using an identifier model; define a set of information from stored information including plural action functions and categories, excluding categories not identified as relevant; generate a reduced system state, including the probability values associated with one or more of the plural possible values for each relevant category; determine an action based on the reduced system state and the set of information using a policy model; output information specified by the determined action at an output.

Abstract: A dialog system comprising: an input for receiving data relating to a speech or text signal originating from a user; an output for outputting information specified by an action; and a processor configured to: update one or more system states based on the input data using one or more state tracker models, wherein the one or more system states comprise probability values associated with each of a plurality of possible values for each of a plurality of categories, wherein a category corresponds to a subject that the speech or text signal may relate to and can take on one or more values from a set of values; determine an action function and determine an action function input by inputting information generated using the system state and a set of stored information into a policy model, the set of stored information comprising a plurality of action functions; output information specified by the determined action function and the determined action function input at the output.

Abstract: A speech intelligibility enhancing system for enhancing speech, the system comprising: a speech input for receiving speech to be enhanced; an enhanced speech output to output the enhanced speech; and a processor configured to convert speech received from the speech input to enhanced speech to be output by the enhanced speech output, the processor being configured to: i) extract a frame of the speech received from the speech input; ii) calculate a measure of the frame importance; iii) estimate a contribution due to late reverberation to the frame power of the speech when reverbed; iv) calculate a prescribed frame power, the prescribed frame power being a function of the power of the extracted frame, the measure of the frame importance and the contribution due to late reverberation, the function being configured to decrease the ratio of the prescribed frame power to the power of the extracted frame as the contribution due to late reverberation increases above a critical value, {tilde over (l)}; and v) apply

Abstract: 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; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: 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; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A speech intelligibility enhancing system for enhancing speech, the system comprising: a speech input for receiving speech to be enhanced; an enhanced speech output to output the enhanced speech; and a processor configured to convert speech received by the speech input to enhanced speech to be output by the enhanced speech output, the processor being configured to: extract a portion of the speech received by the speech input; calculate the power of the portion; estimate a contribution due to late reverberation to the power of the portion of the speech when reverbed; calculate a target late reverberation power; determine a time ti for the estimated contribution due to late reverberation to decay to the target late reverberation power; calculate a pause duration, wherein the pause duration is calculated using the time ti; insert a pause having the calculated duration into the speech received by the speech input at a first location, wherein the first location is followed by the portion.

Abstract: A speech intelligibility enhancing system for enhancing speech, the system comprising: a speech input for receiving speech to be enhanced; an enhanced speech output to output the enhanced speech; and a processor configured to convert speech received from the speech input to enhanced speech to be output by the enhanced speech output, the processor being configured to: i) extract a frame of the speech received from the speech input; ii) calculate a measure of the frame importance; iii) estimate a contribution due to late reverberation to the frame power of the speech when reverbed; iv) calculate a prescribed frame power, the prescribed frame power being a function of the power of the extracted frame, the measure of the frame importance and the contribution due to late reverberation, the function being configured to decrease the ratio of the prescribed frame power to the power of the extracted frame as the contribution due to late reverberation increases above a critical value, {tilde over (l)}; and v) apply

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: A speech intelligibility enhancing system for enhancing speech to be outputted in a noisy environment, the system comprising: a speech input for receiving speech to be enhanced; a noise input for receiving real-time information concerning the noisy environment; an enhanced speech output to output said enhanced speech; and a processor configured to convert speech received from said speech input to enhanced speech to be output by said enhanced speech output, the processor being configured to: apply a spectral shaping filter to the speech received via said speech input; apply dynamic range compression to the output of said spectral shaping filter; and measure the signal to noise ratio at the noise input, wherein the spectral shaping filter comprises a control parameter and the dynamic range compression comprises a control parameter and wherein at least one of the control parameters for the dynamic range compression or the spectral shaping is updated in real time according to the measured signal to noise ratio.

Abstract: 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; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: 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, said method comprising: inputting the text of said book; dividing said input text into a sequence of acoustic units; determining expression characteristics for the inputted text; calculating a duration for each acoustic unit using a duration model; converting said sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of image vectors using a statistical model, wherein said model has a plurality of model parameters describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to an image vector, said image vector comprising a plurality of parameters which define a face of said head; converting said sequence of acoustic units into a sequence of text display indicators using an text dis

Abstract: Natural-sounding synthesized speech is obtained from pieced elemental speech units that have their super-class identities known (e.g. phoneme type), and their line spectral frequencies (LSF) set in accordance with a correlation between the desired fundamental frequency and the LSF vectors that are known for different classes in the super-class. The correlation between a fundamental frequency in a class and the corresponding LSF is obtained by, for example, analyzing the database of recorded speech of a person and, more particularly, by analyzing frames of the speech signal.