Ears of the Robot: Three Simultaneous Speech Segregation and Recognition Using Robot-Mounted Microphones

Naoya MOCHIKI
Tetsuji OGAWA
Tetsunori KOBAYASHI

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems   Vol.E90-D    No.9    pp.1465-1468
Publication Date: 2007/09/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1361
DOI: 10.1093/ietisy/e90-d.9.1465
Print ISSN: 0916-8532
Type of Manuscript: LETTER
Category: Speech and Hearing
Keyword: 
robot audition,  sound source segregation,  speech recognition,  SAFIA,  spectral subtraction,  

Full Text: PDF(772.7KB)>>
Buy this Article


Summary: 
A new type of sound source segregation method using robot-mounted microphones, which are free from strict head related transfer function (HRTF) estimation, has been proposed and successfully applied to three simultaneous speech recognition systems. The proposed segregation method is executed with sound intensity differences that are due to the particular arrangement of the four directivity microphones and the existence of a robot head acting as a sound barrier. The proposed method consists of three-layered signal processing: two-line SAFIA (binary masking based on the narrow band sound intensity comparison), two-line spectral subtraction and their integration. We performed 20 K vocabulary continuous speech recognition test in the presence of three speakers' simultaneous talk, and achieved more than 70% word error reduction compared with the case without any segregation processing.

open access publishing via