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Digital Planet: Emotional synthetic voices

Factual: Science & Nature

Nicola Bush

11/12/2012

Emotional synthetic voices

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, Emotional synthetic voices

Accents, emotion and preserving for the future: how synthesised voices are changing

The art and science behind synthesised voice technology; A report on how to put emotion into artificial voices; Controlling devices with a wave of the hand

Articulate: Synthetic Speech
Professor Stephen Hawking has the most famous synthesized voice but it is based on technology that dates back to the 1980s.  That artificial sounding voice has become synonymous with him.  The technology has advanced but he retains his voice.  For many people around the world, though, the technology proves expensive and many are subsequently rendered voiceless.  As the technology improves so too should the cost of it come tumbling down.  Alistair Edwards joins Click to discuss advances in speech synthesis.

Emotional synthetic voices
A road show called Articulate: The Art and Science of Synthetic Speech recently opened in York, northern England.  It brings together the CreST Network of scientists, artists, speech therapists and users of synthesized voice technology to demonstrate what can be done with computer assisted voices.  To what degree can the technology communicate not just meaning but emotion?  Will the technology ever allow for a bespoke fit for the voice and desire of the users?  Colin Grant reports.
(Photo: Nicola Bush / Credit: CreST Network)

Fine 3D gesture recognition
You've heard about touch screen gadgets. Well how about 'wave' screen gadgets, devices that will recognise a desired action by the wave of your hand.  This kind of gesture recognition is newer, potentially more accurate, requires less power than any other kind of control of a device initiated by Kinect and body motion.  Instead of using cameras, the next generation of gesture controllers may be based on electric fields.  Fanie Duvenhage from Microchip Technology joins Click to discuss how the technology works.

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