Investigation of gesture control for articulatory speech synthesis with a bio-mechanical mapping layer

In the process of working with a real-time, gesture controlled speech and singing synthesizer used for musical performance, we have documented performer related issues and provided some suggestions that will serve to improve future work in the field from an engineering and technician's perspective. One particular, significant detrimental factor in the existing system is the sound quality caused by the limitations of the one-to-one kinematic mapping between the gesture input and output. In order to solve this a force activated bio-mechanical mapping layer was implemented to drive an articulatory synthesizer, and the results were and compared with the existing mapping system for the same task from both the performer and listener perspective. The results show that adding the complex, dynamic bio-mechanical mapping layer introduces more difficulty but allows a greater degree of expression to the performer that is consistent with existing work in the literature. However, to the novice listener, there is no significant difference in the intelligibility of the sound or the perceived quality. The results suggest that for browsing through a vowel space force and position input are comparable when considering output intelligibility alone but for expressivity a complex input may be more suitable.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat