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Section: Partnerships and Cooperations
National Initiatives
EQUIPEX ORTOLANG
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Project acronym: ORTOLANG (http://www.ortolang.fr)
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Other partners: LPL (Aix en Provence), LORIA (Nancy), Modyco (Paris), LLL (Orléans), INIST (Nancy)
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Abstract: The aim of ORTOLANG was to propose a network infrastructure offering a repository of language data (corpora, lexicons, dictionaries, etc.) and tools and their treatment that are readily available and well-documented. This will enable a real mutualization of analysis research, of modeling and automatic treatment of the French language. This will also facilitate the use and transfer of resources and tools set up within public laboratories towards industrial partners, in particular towards SME which often cannot develop such resources and tools for language treatment due to the costs of their realization. Moreover, this will promote the French language and local languages of France by sharing knowledge which has been acquired by public laboratories.
Several teams of the LORIA laboratory contribute to this Equipex, mainly with respect to providing tools for speech and language processing. MULTISPEECH contributes with text-speech alignment and speech visualization tools.
E-FRAN METAL
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Project title: Modèles Et Traces au service de l’Apprentissage des Langues
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Other partners: Interpsy, LISEC, ESPE de Lorraine, D@NTE (Univ. Versailles Saint Quentin), Sailendra SAS, ITOP Education, Rectorat.
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Abstract: METAL aims at improving the learning of languages (both written and oral components) through the development of new tools and the analysis of numeric traces associated with students' learning, in order to adapt to the needs and rythm of each learner.
Multispeech is concerned by oral language learning aspects.
PIA2 ISITE LUE
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Abstract: The initiative aims at developing and densifying the initial perimeter of excellence, within the scope of the social and economic challenges, so as to build an original model for a leading global engineering university, with a strong emphasis on technological research and education through research. For this, we have designed LUE as an “engine” for the development of excellence, by stimulating an original dialogue between knowledge fields.
MULTISPEECH is mainly concerned with challenge number 6: "Knowledge engineering", i.e., engineering applied to the field of knowledge and language, which represent our immaterial wealth while being a critical factor for the consistency of future choices. In 2016, this project has funded a new PhD thesis.
ANR ContNomina
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Project title: Exploitation of context for proper names recognition in diachronic audio documents
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Abstract: The ContNomina project focuses on the problem of proper names in automatic audio processing systems by exploiting in the most efficient way the context of the processed documents. To do this, the project addresses the statistical modeling of contexts and of relationships between contexts and proper names; the contextualization of the recognition module (through the dynamic adjustment of the lexicon and of the language model in order to make them more accurate and certainly more relevant in terms of lexical coverage, particularly with respect to proper names); and the detection of proper names (on the one hand, in text documents for building lists of proper names, and on the other hand, in the output of the recognition system to identify spoken proper names in the audio/video data).
ANR ORFEO
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Project acronym: ORFEO (http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/en/anr-funded-project/?tx_lwmsuivibilan_pi2[CODE]=ANR-12-CORP-0005)
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Project title: Outils et Ressources pour le Français Écrit et Oral
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Other partners: ATILF, CLLE-ERSS, ICAR, LIF, LORIA, LATTICE, MoDyCo
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Abstract: The main objective of the ORFEO project is the constitution of a corpus for the study of contemporary French.
In this project, we were concerned by the automatic speech-text alignment at the word and phoneme levels for audio files from several corpora gathered by the project. These corpora orthographically transcribed with Transcriber contain mainly spontaneous speech, recorded under various conditions with a large SNR range and a lot of overlapping speech and anonymised speech segments. For the forced speech-text alignment phase, we applied our 2-step methodology (the first step uses a detailed acoustic model for finding the pronunciation variants; then, in the second step a more compact model is used to provide more temporally accurate boundaries).
ANR-DFG IFCASL
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Project title: Individualized feedback in computer-assisted spoken language learning
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Abstract: The main objective of IFCASL is to investigate learning of oral French by German speakers, and oral German by French speakers at the phonetic level.
A French-German learner corpus was designed and recorded. French speakers were recorded in Nancy, whereas German speakers were recorded in Saarbrücken. An automatic speech-text alignment process was applied on all the data. Then, the French speech data (native and non-native) were manually checked and annotated in France, and the German speech data (native and non-native) were manually checked and annotated in Germany. The corpora are currently used for analyzing non-native pronunciations, and studying feedback procedures.
ANR DYCI2
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Project acronym: DYCI2 (http://repmus.ircam.fr/dyci2/)
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Abstract: The goal of this project is to design a music improvisation system which will be able to listen to the other musicians, improvise in their style, and modify its improvisation according to their feedback in real time.
ANR JCJC KAMoulox
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Project title: Kernel additive modelling for the unmixing of large audio archives
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Abstract: Develop the theoretical and applied tools required to embed audio denoising and separation tools in web-based audio archives. The applicative scenario is to deal with large audio archives, and more precisely with the notorious "Archives du CNRS — Musée de l'homme", gathering about 50,000 recordings dating back to the early 1900s.
ANR ArtSpeech
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Other partners: Gipsa-Lab (Grenoble), IADI (Nancy), LPP (Paris)
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Abstract: The objective is to synthesize speech from text via the numerical simulation of the human speech production processes, i.e. the articulatory, aerodynamic and acoustic aspects. Corpus based approaches have taken a hegemonic place in text to speech synthesis. They exploit very good acoustic quality speech databases while covering a high number of expressions and of phonetic contexts. This is sufficient to produce intelligible speech. However, these approaches face almost insurmountable obstacles as soon as parameters intimately related to the physical process of speech production have to be modified. On the contrary, an approach which rests on the simulation of the physical speech production process makes explicitly use of source parameters, anatomy and geometry of the vocal tract, and of a temporal supervision strategy. It thus offers direct control on the nature of the synthetic speech.
Measurements of glottis opening during the production of fricatives via EPGG (ElectroPhotoGlottoGraphy), the design of acoustic experiments with a replica of the vocal tract and the design of dynamic acquisition with MRI were the main activities of this first year.
FUI RAPSODIE
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Project title: Automatic Speech Recognition for Hard of Hearing or Handicapped People
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Other partners: CEA (Grenoble), Inria (Nancy), CASTORAMA (France)
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Abstract: The goal of the project was to realize a portable device to help a hard-of-hearing person to communicate with other people. To achieve this goal the portable device needs to access a speech recognition system, adapted to this task. Another application of the device is environment vocal control for handicapped persons.
In this project, MULTISPEECH was involved in optimizing the speech recognition models for the envisaged task, and in finding the best way of presenting the speech recognition results in order to maximize the communication efficiency between the hard-of-hearing person and the speaking person.
FUI VoiceHome
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Other partners: Orange, Delta Dore, Technicolor Connected Home, eSoftThings, Inria (Nancy), IRISA, LOUSTIC
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Abstract: The goal of this project is to design a robust voice control system for smart home and multimedia applications. We are responsible for the robust automatic speech recognition brick.
ADT Plavis
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Project title: Platform for acquisition and audiovisual speech synthesis
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Abstract: The objective of this project was to develop a platform acquisition and audiovisual synthesis system (3D animation of the face synchronously with audio). The main purpose was to build a comprehensive platform for acquisition and processing of audiovisual corpus (selection, acquisition and acoustic processing, 3D visual processing and linguistic processing). The acquisition was performed using a motion-capture system (Kinect-like), a Vicon system, and an electromagnetic articulography (EMA) system.
LORIA exploratory project
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Project title: Acquisition and processing of multimodal corpus in the context of interactive human communication
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Abstract: The aim of this project was the study of the various mechanisms involved in multimodal human communication that can be oral, visual, gestural and tactile. This project focused on the identification and acquisition of a very large corpus of multimodal data from multiple information sources and acquired in the context of interaction and communication between two people or more.
SYNABE
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Project title: Articulatory data synchronization for studying stuttering
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Coordinator: Fabrice Hirsch (Praxiling, UMR 5267, Montpellier)
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Abstract: The objective of this project is to use simultaneously three hardware allowing having information on the subglottic (respiratory belt), glottic (electroglottograph) and supraglottic (articulograph) levels during the production of the speech in order to know the timing of the gestures during speech. This system will be used to study the motor coordination between the three levels mentioned in the stuttering and normo-fluent words. We will propose a new typology of normal and pathological disfluencies.
Our main contribution concerned the articulatory data acquisition using the articulograph AG501.