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Computer-aided animated gesture-driven facial model with speech synthesis

  • Arumugam Rathinavelu EMAIL logo und Kesavamurthi Saranya
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 24. Februar 2014

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop a gesture-driven facial model with speech synthesis capability. A two-dimensional facial Model was developed and animated based on the Facial Action Coding System. Such emotions as “happy”, “sad”, “anger”, and “fear” were simulated and visualized through the combination of eight action units. A speech synthesizer for the Tamil language was built using a syllable-based concatenation approach. The results indicated that the synthetic speech had an average accuracy rate ranging from 85% to 90% as natural as the human speech. Moreover, 75%–85% of the words were articulated well and identified by the children correctly. The ultimate goal of the system is to assist children with vocal and hearing disabilities in their language learning process.


Corresponding author: Arumugam Rathinavelu, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi, India, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

This research work was financially supported by the Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi, South India. We also wish to thank the members of the college management.

Conflict of interest statement

Authors’ conflict of interest disclosure: The authors stated that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article. Research support played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.

Research funding: None declared.

Employment or leadership: None declared.

Honorarium: None declared.

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Received: 2013-6-7
Accepted: 2013-8-1
Published Online: 2014-2-24
Published in Print: 2015-2-1

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