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Papers by Catherine Watson
In this paper we give results of an initial investigation into the perception of synthetic speech... more In this paper we give results of an initial investigation into the perception of synthetic speech delivered through a robotic plat-form. The robotic speech was judged by 19 residents and 10 staff of a New Zealand retirement village. We have investigated intelligibility and quality ...
This paper presents our work on building an expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, whic... more This paper presents our work on building an expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, which can be used on a social or service robot. Eface aims at enabling a robot to deliver information clearly with empathetic speech and an expressive virtual face. The system is built on two open source software packages: the Festival speech synthesis system, which provides robots the capability to speak with different voices and emotions, and Xface-a 3D talking head, which enables the robot to display various human facial expressions. This paper addresses how to express different speech emotions with Festival and how to integrate the synthesized speech with Xface. We have also implemented Eface on a physical robot and tested it with some service scenarios.
Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing 1988 Icassp 88 1988 International Conference on, Mar 1, 2008
The Discrete Cosine Transform is proposed as a basis for representing fundamental frequency (F0) ... more The Discrete Cosine Transform is proposed as a basis for representing fundamental frequency (F0) contours of speech. The advantages over existing representations include deterministic algorithms for both analysis and synthesis and a simple distance measure in the parameter space. A two-tier model using the DCT is shown to be able to model F0 contours to around 10Hz RMS error. A proof-of-concept system for synthesising DCT parameters is evaluated, showing that the benefits do not come at the expense of speech synthesis applications.
... 2, How long have women been leading language change Maclagan - 2000. 2, The story of New Ze... more ... 2, How long have women been leading language change Maclagan - 2000. 2, The story of New Zealand English: what the ONZE project tells us Maclagan, Gordon - 2004. 1, The Australian Language. ... The New Zealand Speech Therapists Gordon - 1983. ...
Coling, 2000
Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the... more Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the tone-based ToBI al)proach and the 1;unebased api)roach proposed by Systemic Functi(mal Grammar (SFO). The goal of this comparison is to detine a mapping between the two systems tbr the purpose of concept-to-speech generation of English. Since ToB: is widely used in Sl)eech synthesis and SFG is widely used in nal;ural language generation and oft~rs a linguistically motivated aecollnt of intonation, it; appears a promising step to comt)ine the two approaches for concept-to-speech. A corpus of English utterances has been analysed with both ~].~()13I and SFG categories; eomparison of the analysis results has lead to the identification of some basic equivalents between the two systems on which a mapping can be based.
Abstract This study explores phrase-level prosody and prominence in the Māori language. Limited e... more Abstract This study explores phrase-level prosody and prominence in the Māori language. Limited existing prosodic analysis and anecdotal evidence of diachronic change have motivated the present investigation into alignment of descriptions of intonation and stress ...
Proceedings of the 2009 Ieee Rsj International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Oct 10, 2009
This paper presents our expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, for a social or service ... more This paper presents our expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, for a social or service robot. Eface aims at enabling a robot to deliver information clearly with empathetic speech and an expressive virtual face. The empathetic speech is built on the Festival speech synthesis system and provides robots the capability to speak with different voices and emotions. Two versions of a virtual face have been implemented to display the robot's expressions. One with just over 100 polygons has a lower hardware requirement but looks less natural. The other has over 1000 polygons; it looks realistic, but costs more CPU resource and requires better video hardware. The whole system is incorporated into the popular open source robot interface Player, which makes client programs easy to write and debug. Also, it is convenient to use the same system with different robot platforms. We have implemented this system on a physical robot and tested it with a robotic nurse assistant scenario.
2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2010
Abstract This paper presents the first version of a mobile service robot designed for older peopl... more Abstract This paper presents the first version of a mobile service robot designed for older people. Six service application modules were developed with the key objective being successful interaction between the robot and the older people. A series of trials were conducted in an independent living facility at a retirement village, with the participation of 32 residents and 21 staff. In this paper, challenges of deploying the robot and lessons learned are discussed. Results show that the robot could successfully interact with people and ...
2009 17th European Signal Processing Conference, Aug 1, 2009
... Jonathan Teutenberg1, Catherine I. Watson2 ... Age, sex, vocal tract length and articulatory ... more ... Jonathan Teutenberg1, Catherine I. Watson2 ... Age, sex, vocal tract length and articulatory flexi-bility are expected to remain unchanged after accent modi-fication, in comparison to voice conversion where wholesale changes to a voice are made. ...
Proceedings of the 18th conference on Computational linguistics -, 2000
Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the... more Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the tone-based ToBI al)proach and the 1;unebased api)roach proposed by Systemic Functi(mal Grammar (SFO). The goal of this comparison is to detine a mapping between the two systems tbr the purpose of concept-to-speech generation of English. Since ToB: is widely used in Sl)eech synthesis and SFG is widely used in nal;ural language generation and oft~rs a linguistically motivated aecollnt of intonation, it; appears a promising step to comt)ine the two approaches for concept-to-speech. A corpus of English utterances has been analysed with both ~].~()13I and SFG categories; eomparison of the analysis results has lead to the identification of some basic equivalents between the two systems on which a mapping can be based.
Nature
... There was a marked social stratification in Britain in the 1950s4, and in 1963 the pho-netici... more ... There was a marked social stratification in Britain in the 1950s4, and in 1963 the pho-netician David Abercrombie wrote, One either speaks received pronunciation, or one does not, and if the opportunity to learn it in youth has not arisen, it is almost impossi-ble to learn it in ...
In this paper we give results of an initial investigation into the perception of synthetic speech... more In this paper we give results of an initial investigation into the perception of synthetic speech delivered through a robotic plat-form. The robotic speech was judged by 19 residents and 10 staff of a New Zealand retirement village. We have investigated intelligibility and quality ...
This paper presents our work on building an expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, whic... more This paper presents our work on building an expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, which can be used on a social or service robot. Eface aims at enabling a robot to deliver information clearly with empathetic speech and an expressive virtual face. The system is built on two open source software packages: the Festival speech synthesis system, which provides robots the capability to speak with different voices and emotions, and Xface-a 3D talking head, which enables the robot to display various human facial expressions. This paper addresses how to express different speech emotions with Festival and how to integrate the synthesized speech with Xface. We have also implemented Eface on a physical robot and tested it with some service scenarios.
Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing 1988 Icassp 88 1988 International Conference on, Mar 1, 2008
The Discrete Cosine Transform is proposed as a basis for representing fundamental frequency (F0) ... more The Discrete Cosine Transform is proposed as a basis for representing fundamental frequency (F0) contours of speech. The advantages over existing representations include deterministic algorithms for both analysis and synthesis and a simple distance measure in the parameter space. A two-tier model using the DCT is shown to be able to model F0 contours to around 10Hz RMS error. A proof-of-concept system for synthesising DCT parameters is evaluated, showing that the benefits do not come at the expense of speech synthesis applications.
... 2, How long have women been leading language change Maclagan - 2000. 2, The story of New Ze... more ... 2, How long have women been leading language change Maclagan - 2000. 2, The story of New Zealand English: what the ONZE project tells us Maclagan, Gordon - 2004. 1, The Australian Language. ... The New Zealand Speech Therapists Gordon - 1983. ...
Coling, 2000
Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the... more Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the tone-based ToBI al)proach and the 1;unebased api)roach proposed by Systemic Functi(mal Grammar (SFO). The goal of this comparison is to detine a mapping between the two systems tbr the purpose of concept-to-speech generation of English. Since ToB: is widely used in Sl)eech synthesis and SFG is widely used in nal;ural language generation and oft~rs a linguistically motivated aecollnt of intonation, it; appears a promising step to comt)ine the two approaches for concept-to-speech. A corpus of English utterances has been analysed with both ~].~()13I and SFG categories; eomparison of the analysis results has lead to the identification of some basic equivalents between the two systems on which a mapping can be based.
Abstract This study explores phrase-level prosody and prominence in the Māori language. Limited e... more Abstract This study explores phrase-level prosody and prominence in the Māori language. Limited existing prosodic analysis and anecdotal evidence of diachronic change have motivated the present investigation into alignment of descriptions of intonation and stress ...
Proceedings of the 2009 Ieee Rsj International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Oct 10, 2009
This paper presents our expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, for a social or service ... more This paper presents our expressive facial speech synthesis system Eface, for a social or service robot. Eface aims at enabling a robot to deliver information clearly with empathetic speech and an expressive virtual face. The empathetic speech is built on the Festival speech synthesis system and provides robots the capability to speak with different voices and emotions. Two versions of a virtual face have been implemented to display the robot's expressions. One with just over 100 polygons has a lower hardware requirement but looks less natural. The other has over 1000 polygons; it looks realistic, but costs more CPU resource and requires better video hardware. The whole system is incorporated into the popular open source robot interface Player, which makes client programs easy to write and debug. Also, it is convenient to use the same system with different robot platforms. We have implemented this system on a physical robot and tested it with a robotic nurse assistant scenario.
2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2010
Abstract This paper presents the first version of a mobile service robot designed for older peopl... more Abstract This paper presents the first version of a mobile service robot designed for older people. Six service application modules were developed with the key objective being successful interaction between the robot and the older people. A series of trials were conducted in an independent living facility at a retirement village, with the participation of 32 residents and 21 staff. In this paper, challenges of deploying the robot and lessons learned are discussed. Results show that the robot could successfully interact with people and ...
2009 17th European Signal Processing Conference, Aug 1, 2009
... Jonathan Teutenberg1, Catherine I. Watson2 ... Age, sex, vocal tract length and articulatory ... more ... Jonathan Teutenberg1, Catherine I. Watson2 ... Age, sex, vocal tract length and articulatory flexi-bility are expected to remain unchanged after accent modi-fication, in comparison to voice conversion where wholesale changes to a voice are made. ...
Proceedings of the 18th conference on Computational linguistics -, 2000
Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the... more Tlle paper describes the results of a comparison of two annotation systems for isstoslal;ion, the tone-based ToBI al)proach and the 1;unebased api)roach proposed by Systemic Functi(mal Grammar (SFO). The goal of this comparison is to detine a mapping between the two systems tbr the purpose of concept-to-speech generation of English. Since ToB: is widely used in Sl)eech synthesis and SFG is widely used in nal;ural language generation and oft~rs a linguistically motivated aecollnt of intonation, it; appears a promising step to comt)ine the two approaches for concept-to-speech. A corpus of English utterances has been analysed with both ~].~()13I and SFG categories; eomparison of the analysis results has lead to the identification of some basic equivalents between the two systems on which a mapping can be based.
Nature
... There was a marked social stratification in Britain in the 1950s4, and in 1963 the pho-netici... more ... There was a marked social stratification in Britain in the 1950s4, and in 1963 the pho-netician David Abercrombie wrote, One either speaks received pronunciation, or one does not, and if the opportunity to learn it in youth has not arisen, it is almost impossi-ble to learn it in ...