Methods and systems for adaptation of synthetic speech in an environment

A system comprising:

• a device including a text-to-speech module;
• and
• a processor coupled to the device, and the processor is configured to:
• determine one or more characteristics of an environment of the device, wherein the one or more characteristics include one or more characteristics of a background sound in the environment of the device, and wherein the one or more characteristics of the environment are time-varying;
• determine, based on the one or more characteristics of the environment, one or more speech parameters that characterize a voice output of the text-to-speech module, wherein, to determine the one or more speech parameters, the processor is configured to:
• determine a transform to convert a first set of speech parameters determined for a substantially sound-free background environment to a second set of speech parameters that includes Lombard parameters determined for a given environment with a previously determined background sound condition, wherein the Lombard parameters are determined such that the voice output is intelligible in the previously determined background sound condition,
• modify, based on the one or more characteristics, the transform, and
• apply the modified transform to one of (i) the first set of speech parameters, and (ii) the Lombard parameters to obtain the one or more speech parameters;
• and
• process a text to obtain the voice output corresponding to the text based on the one or more speech parameters to account for the one or more characteristics of the environment.

A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform functions comprising:

• determining one or more characteristics of an environment, wherein the one or more characteristics include one or more characteristics of a background sound in the environment of the device, and wherein the one or more characteristics of the environment are time-varying;
• determining, based on the one or more characteristics of the environment, one or more speech parameters that characterize a voice output of a text-to-speech module coupled to the computing device, wherein determining the one or more speech parameters comprises extrapolating or interpolating, based on the one or more characteristics, between a first set of speech parameters determined for a substantially background sound-free environment and a second set of speech parameters that are Lombard parameters determined for a given environment with a previously determined background sound condition, wherein the Lombard parameters are determined such that the voice output is intelligible in the previously determined background sound condition;
• processing, by the text-to-speech module, a text to obtain the voice output corresponding to the text based on the one or more speech parameters to account for the one or more characteristics of the environment.