Speech synthesizer and speech synthesis system
AssigneeOki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
InventorTsutomu Kaneyasu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A speech synthesizer conducts a dialogue among a plurality of synthesized speakers, including a self speaker and one or more partner speakers, by use of a voice profile table describing emotional characteristics of synthesized voices, a speaker database storing feature data for different types of speakers and/or different speaking tones, a speech synthesis engine that synthesizes speech from input text according to feature data fitting the voice profile assigned to each synthesized speaker, and a profile manager that updates the voice profiles according to the content of the spoken text. The voice profiles of partner speakers are initially derived from the voice profile of the self speaker. A synthesized dialogue can be set up simply by selecting the voice profile of the self speaker.
Claims17
A speech synthesizer for conducting a dialogue among a plurality of synthesized speakers, comprising:
- a word dictionary storing information indicating characteristics of words;
- a voice profile table storing at least one voice profile including information indicating characteristics of a synthesized voice, each of the plurality of synthesized speakers being assigned a voice profile stored in the voice profile table;
- a text analyzer for receiving an input text to be spoken by one of the synthesized speakers and extracting words from the input text;
- a speaker database storing feature data for different types of speakers and/or different speaking tones;
- and
- a speech synthesis engine for referring to the voice profile table to obtain the voice profile of said one of the synthesized speakers, searching the speaker database to find feature data fitting the voice profile of said one of the synthesized speakers, and synthesizing speech from the input text according to the feature data found in the speaker database;
- wherein
- one of the plurality of synthesized speakers is designated as a self speaker, each other one of the plurality of synthesized speakers is designated as a partner speaker, and the voice profile assigned to each partner speaker is initially derived from the voice profile assigned to the self speaker.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.