Géza Kiss

Profivox—A Hungarian Text-to-Speech System for Telecommunications Applications

The latest Hungarian text-to-speech (TTS) system developed for telephone-based applications is described. The main features are intelligible human-like voice; robust software designed for continuous running; fully automatic conversion of declarative (short and very long) sentences and questions; and real time parallel operation, running on minimum 30 channels. The concept of prosody generation and sound duration processing is introduced. Also, the development environment of Profivox is presented. The market-leader Hungarian mobile service provider applies the TTS system in an automatic e-mail reading application.

The Design, Implementation, and Operation of a Hungarian E-Mail Reader

The markets leading Hungarian Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operator—Westel—has recently introduced a Hungarian e-mail reading system as a regular service. It was implemented on the basis of an experimental system developed at the Department of Telecommunications and Telematics of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (DTT BUTE). In this article, the considerations involved in the design and implementation decisions of both the experimental and the industrial systems will be described. Results of the first 10 weeks of regular use of the industrial system will also be given.

Speech Generation in Mobile Phones

Mobile phones became indispensable friends for many people. They are being used in all spaces of life including the car. The security risk of this situation has motivated severe regulation of use on one hand and on the other hand, increased attention to built-in speech recognition. Far less attention has been paid however to possible advantages of automatic speech generation by phones including text-to-speech (TTS). This chapter addresses this domain. It will examine the general concepts and application areas of speaking mobile phones. In addition to the well known advantages for visually impaired, blind or speech impaired people such functionalities may help in the case of other hands-busy or eyes-busy situations (e.g., cooking in the kitchen). The advancement of this area is due to the appearance of mobile phone operating systems (Symbian, Palm OS, MS Smartphone and Linux Mobile) which can run applications created by developers independent from the phone manufacturers. A case study of a speaking aid mobile phone application and the first automatic SMS-reading mobile phone application introduced in Hungary in October 2003 will also be presented. It is shown that the proper combination of careful user interface design and high quality TTS should be supplemented by automatic language identification and other modules as well. Analysis of these supplementary modules is also presented.

Cross Platform Solution of Communication and Voice/Graphical User Interface for Mobile Devices in Vehicles

Two long-term goals of our study has been to develop a standardized communication interface between the mobile device and other onboard systems and to create a parametrical, scaleable user interface, both with voice and graphical user input/output. This chapter describes the main requirements, principles, and aspects of a voice/graphical user interface and of a Bluetooth based communication interface. Requirements and limitations for the implementation of speech synthesis on mobile devices will also be introduced. An SMS-reader application will be presented as a sample application of a mobile device on a vehicle.

Mobile devices converted into a speaking communication aid

The goal of the present study is to introduce a speaking interface of mobile devices for speech impaired people. The latest devices (including PDAs with integrated telephone, Smartphones, Tablet PCs) possess numerous favorable features: small size, portability, considerably fast processor speed, increased storage size, telephony, large display and convenient development environment. The majority of vocally handicapped users are elderly people who are often not familiar with computers. Many of them have other disorder(s) (e.g. motor) and/or impaired vision. The paper reports the design and implementation aspects of converting standard devices into a mobile speaking aid for face-to-face and telephone conversations. The device can be controlled and text is input by touch-screen and the output is generated by a text-to-speech system. The interface is configurable (screen colors and text size, speaking options, etc.) according to the users’ personal preferences.

Language processing for name and address reading in Hungarian

Name and address reading is an important combined application area of language processing and text-to-speech (TTS) systems. It is the cornerstone of both traditional reverse directory telephone services and new, location based, traffic and tour guide applications. The language processing aspects of a solution for Hungarian is described. The work was based on the analysis of a subscriber database containing about 3 million records (there are about 10 million Hungarian citizens). Categories of name and address elements were defined. A program for the automatic classification of database records was developed. Statistical parameters were derived about proper/legal names and addresses. Based on these results text corpora for enriching the TTS acoustic database were designed. Reading strategies and related special algorithms and tables were developed for the description of complex name categories. Our results may be applied for similar tasks of other languages with comparable linguistic and statistical features.

Automated Drug Information System for Aged and Visually Impaired Persons

Aged and visually impaired persons belong to those groups of people, who can get information about drugs not so easily, as others. Although in Hungary lately Braille prints (containing the name of the medicament) are placed on the boxes of the drugs, but getting detailed information about the drug, i.e. to access the content of the written Patient Information Leaflets (PIL), is complicated. The Medicine Line (MLN) service may help in solving this problem. This automatic telephone information system was developed and put into operation in Hungary in December 2006. The computer system speaks and understands Hungarian, so the aged and visually impaired can get the information about the drug by voice. Adaptation to other languages is also possible. As we know, no such system is available in the European Union.