Sensimetrics Corporation - One-Hand-Operated Speech Synthesis

One-Hand-Operated Speech Synthesis

Many people who lose their voice due to trauma or cancer rely on a text-to-speech (TTS) system or an electrolarynx (EL) to produce speech. State-of-the-art TTS systems can provide intelligible and somewhat natural speech at a rate as fast as the user can type, while an EL can produce speech at a normal rate but with decreased naturalness and intelligibility. This research explores a person's potential for controlling the HLsyn speech synthesizer in real time with one hand using a pen-like device, a strategy that could produce intelligible speech at a normal rate that is more natural than either a TTS system or EL speech.