VOICE-ESTIMATION BASED ON REAL-TIME PROBING OF THE VOCAL TRACT
First Claim
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1. An apparatus, comprising:
- a speaker for directing an excitation signal into a vocal tract;
a microphone for detecting a vocal-tract response signal corresponding to the excitation signal; and
a digital signal processor operatively coupled to the microphone and configured to;
process a segment of the response signal to determine a corresponding set of one or more formant frequencies for the vocal tract; and
further process the set of formant frequencies to identify a phoneme corresponding to the segment.
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Abstract
A voice-estimation device that probes the vocal tract of a user with sub-threshold acoustic waves to estimate the user'"'"'s voice while the user speaks silently or audibly in a noisy or socially sensitive environment. The waves reflected by the vocal tract are detected and converted into a digital signal, which is then processed segment-by-segment. Based on the processing, a set of formant frequencies is determined for each segment. Each such set is then analyzed to assign a phoneme to the corresponding segment of the digital signal. The resulting sequence of phonemes is converted into a digital audio signal or text representing the user'"'"'s estimated voice.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. An apparatus, comprising:
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a speaker for directing an excitation signal into a vocal tract; a microphone for detecting a vocal-tract response signal corresponding to the excitation signal; and a digital signal processor operatively coupled to the microphone and configured to; process a segment of the response signal to determine a corresponding set of one or more formant frequencies for the vocal tract; and further process the set of formant frequencies to identify a phoneme corresponding to the segment. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. An apparatus, comprising a digital signal processor for being operatively coupled to a speaker configured to direct an excitation signal into a vocal tract and to a microphone configured to detect a vocal-tract response signal corresponding to the excitation signal, wherein said processor is configured to:
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process a segment of the response signal to determine a corresponding set of one or more formant frequencies for the vocal tract; and further process the set of formant frequencies to identify a phoneme corresponding to the segment. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19)
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20. A method of synthesizing speech, comprising:
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directing an excitation signal generated by a speaker into a vocal tract; detecting, with a microphone, a vocal-tract response signal corresponding to the excitation signal; processing a segment of the response signal to determine a corresponding set of one or more formant frequencies for the vocal tract; and processing the set of formant frequencies to identify a phoneme corresponding to the segment.
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Specification