Projects

Financed by MINECO

The Thematic Network on Speech Technologies (RTTH) has for 16 years joined the leading researchers working on this field in Spain. Since 1999, the RTTH has boosted the research in the field of speech technology creating synergies among the different research groups that compose it with the aim of putting the Spanish research on Speech Technologies at the international scientific-technological forefront.
The main objectives of the network are:

• Enhance the international dimension of the research groups working in the field of Speech Technologies in Spain by organizing events that help building strong partnerships at European level to increase the chances of the members of the RTTH in the European framework program H2020.
• Attract investment towards Speech Technologies research by finding new applications that provide new business opportunities. These applications must be materialized on prototypes and demonstrators to attract the interest of companies.
• Encourage scientists and technologists experts on Speech Technologies from academia to join the industrial sector to facilitate the transfer of knowledge between both areas
• Promote research in Speech Technologies attracting young researchers to this field through training, mobility initiatives, scholarships and awards.
• Encourage the use of Speech Technologies as a transversal technology, developing strategies to strengthen its implementation in strategic areas such as health and active aging, the Internet of the future, Big Data, Mobile Communications, …
• Progress in creating partnerships and integration of Network members to maintain the leadership of Spain in the research on Castilian and the rest of the languages of the state avoiding that our country could be left behind in this area with respect the rest of the advanced economies

Participants: Aholab (coordinator), Biocruces

Project Code: TEC2015-67163-C2-1-R

From: 1-1-2016 to: 31-12-2018

According to the data of the Spanish Statistical Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estadística) from 2008, there are more than 400 000 people with oral disabilities in Spain. In Europe, 0.4% of the population has an oral disability as indicated by Eurostat. This kind of disability produces social isolation since the communication with the environment is seriously affected so as to hamper personal relationships and generate problems of integration at the workplace.

RESTORE is a project aimed to improve the quality of communication for people with difficulties  producing speech, providing them with tools and alternative communication services. At the same time, progress will be made at the research of techniques for restoration and rehabilitation of disordered speech. The following goals are proposed for the project:

Goal 1.- Implementation of a donors’ voice bank and creation of the service of personalized synthetic speech for people with oral disabilities in general and people who have been laryngectomised at Hospital Universitario Cruces.

Goal 2.- Design and development of a Serious Game as a multimedia tool to support the speech rehabilitation process for people with voice disorders.

Goal 3.- Improve the intelligibility of alaringeal voices (voices from people who have been laryngectomised) and dysartric voices.

The Project coordinates the research work of two groups, one from the field of Telecommunication Engineering and the other from the field of Medicine and Speech Therapy. The Voice Banking service proposed is a groundbreaking service for the country, since there are only a few experiences with the same aim in USA and Europe. This kind of service offers personalized synthetic speech that can be used in existing Alternative and Augmentative Communication devices. These devices allow people with oral disabilities to communicate. In our proposal the communication is achieved with a personalized voice that might be similar to the patient’s own voice in cases of progressive diseases or laryngectomies. Besides the design and development of a voice training tool is pursued in order to incentive and facilitate the speech rehabilitation process, a real hard and complex task depending on the specific pathology.

The ultimate goal of the project is to offer new possibilities in the rehabilitation and reintegration into society of patients with speech pathologies, especially those laryngectomised, by designing new intervention strategies aimed to favour their communication with the environment and ultimately increase their quality of life. This is the reason why the project fits perfectly into the Challenge 1 – Health, demographic change and wellbeing.

Este proyecto está cofinanciado por el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo de Regional

De-identification in multimedia content can be defined as the process of concealing the identities of individuals captured in a given set of data (images, video, audio, text), for the purpose of protecting their privacy. This will provide an effective means for supporting the EU’s Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC), which is concerned with the introduction of appropriate measures for the protection of personal data.

The fact that a person can be identified by such features as face, voice, silhouette and gait, indicates the de-identification process as an interdisciplinary challenge, involving such scientific areas as image processing, speech analysis, video tracking and biometrics.

This Action aims to facilitate coordinated interdisciplinary efforts (related to scientific, legal, ethical and societal aspects) in the introduction of person de-identification and reversible de-identification in multimedia content by networking relevant European experts and organisations.

Visit the project webpage for more information.