TOWARD MOV EMENT-INVARIANT AUTOMATIC LIP-READING AND SPEECH RECOGNITION

ABSTRACT We present the development of a modular system for flexible human-computer interaction via speech. The speech recognition component integrates acoustic and visual information (automatic lip-rcading) improving overall recognition, especially in noisy en vironments. The image of the lips, constituting the visual input, is automatically extracted from the camera picture of the speaker's face by the lip locator module. Finally, the speaker's face is au tomatically acquired and followed by the face tracker sub-system. Integration of the three functions results in thc first bi-modal speech recognizer allowing the speaker reasonable freedom of movement within a possibly noisy room while continuing to communicate with the computer via voice. Compared to audio-alone recogni tion, the combined system achieves a 20 to 50 percent error rate reduction for various signaVnoise conditions