Design of A Software Tool for Vocal Tract Simulation Systems
Dong-Hwa Lu, Shen-Nan Huang and K. Y. Cheng* Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National Taiwan University Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. *> Institute of Information Science Academia Sinica Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan 115, R.O.C.
The design methodology of a visual-directed software tool which can facilitate the development of vocal tract simulation systems is described and some illustrated examples are shown. This tool has been completely implemented with Microsoft Visual C++TM version 1.51 and is executable in any IBM PC 586 equipped with Microsoft WindowsTM version 3.1 and Monologue for Windows text-to-speech generator. The software tool consists of a vocal tract model generator, an animation unit generator, and a voice-to-picture synchronizer. A phonetician uses the tool to specify rules that can govern the act of voice-to-picture synchronization for each transcription sound. The completed vocal tract simulation system can accept the description of phonetic transcription and sound length distribution. Then it can produce the effect of voice-to-picture synchronization. If the result is not satisfactory, the phonetician can interactively modify the behaviors of each transcription sound. The construction process can be repeated until a good result is obtained.