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We propose a probabilistic model that generates nod motions based on utterance categories estimated from the speech input. The model comprises two main blocks. In the first block, dialogue act-related categories are estimated from the input speech. Considering the correlations between dialogue acts and head motions, the utterances are classified into three categories having distinct nod distributions...
This paper presents a method for representing acoustic information with point clouds by tying it to geometrical features. The motivation is to create a representation of this information that is well suited for mobile robotic applications. In particular, the proposed approach is designed to take advantage of the use of multiple coordinate frames. As an illustrative example, we present a way to create...
This work presents a human-robot cooperative approach for infrastructure inspection. The goal is to create a robot that assists the human inspector during hammer sounding inspections. Hammer sounding is a frequently used inspection technique that detects invisible defects under the surface of concrete by striking the surface with a hammer and listening the resulting sound. The conventional hammer...
This paper presents a framework for making a mobile robot aware of an entity in the blind region of its laser range finders when that entity emits sound. First in a mapping stage, a 3D description of the environment that contains information about acoustic reflection is created. Then during operation, the robot combines estimated directions of arrival of sound with this 3D description to detect entities...
This paper presents a method for mapping the radiated sound intensity of an environment using an autonomous mobile platform. The sound intensities radiated by the objects are estimated by combining the sound intensity at the platform's position (estimated with a steered response power algorithm) and the distances to the objects (estimated using laser range finders). By combining the estimated sound...
This paper presents a method for detecting moving entities that are in the robot's path but not in the field of view of sensors like laser scanners, cameras or ultrasonic sensors. The proposed system makes use of passive acoustic localization methods which receive information from occluded regions (at intersections or corners) because of the multipath nature of sound propagation. Contrary to the conventional...
This paper presents a multi-modal sensor approach for mapping sound sources using an omni-directional microphone array on an autonomous mobile robot. A fusion of audio data (from the microphone array), odometry information and the laser range scan data (from the robot) was used to precisely localize and map the audio sources in an environment. An audio map is created while the robot is autonomously...
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a severe disease with many symptoms, including speech disorders. Although many methods exist to treat some of PD's symptoms, therapies for speech impairment are not effective and satisfactory, resulting in an open area of research. The current project aims at taking advantage of the Lombard reflex to improve the speech loudness of PD patients. As a first step, the experience...
This paper presents an audio monitoring system for detecting and identifying people engaged in a conversation. The proposed method is hands-free as it uses a microphone array to acquire the sound. A particularity of the approach is the use of a laser range finder based human tracker system. The human tracker monitors the locations of people then local steered response power is used to detect the people...
Small informal meetings of two to four participants are very common in work environments. For this reason, a convenient way for recording and archiving these meetings is of great interest. In order to efficiently archive such meetings, an important task to address is to keep trace of “who talked when” during a meeting. This paper proposes a new multi-modal approach to tackle this speaker activity...
Small informal meetings of two to four participants are very common in work environments. For this reason, a convenient way for recording and archiving these meetings is of great interest. In order to efficiently archive such meetings, an important task to address is to keep trace of “who talked when” during a meeting. This paper proposes a new multi-modal approach to tackle this speaker activity...
To let humanoid robots behave socially adequate in a future society, we started to explore laughter as an important para-verbal signal known to influence relationships among humans rather easily. We investigated how the naturalness of various types of laughter in combination with different humanoid robots was judged, first, within a situational context that is suitable for laughter and, second, without...
The application range of communication robots could be widely expanded by the use of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system with improved robustness for noise and for speakers of different ages. In this paper, we describe an ASR system which can robustly recognize speech by adults and children in noisy environments. We evaluate the ASR system in a communication robot placed in a real noisy environment...
Aiming to realize a non-verbal communication between humans and robots, the use of acoustic parameters related with voice quality features, besides classical prosodic features, is proposed and evaluated for automatic extraction of paralinguistic information (intentions, attitudes, and emotions) in dialog speech. Experimental results indicated that prosodic features were effective for detecting groups...
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