Related papers: Improving Meeting Inclusiveness using Speech Inter…
Telepresence robots are used in various forms in various use-cases that helps to avoid physical human presence at the scene of action. In this work, we focus on a telepresence robot that can be used to attend a meeting remotely with a group…
In crowded places such as conferences, background noise, overlapping voices, and lively interactions make it difficult to have clear conversations. This situation often worsens the phenomenon known as "cocktail party deafness." We present…
Speech intelligibility evaluation for hearing-impaired (HI) listeners is essential for assessing hearing aid performance, traditionally relying on listening tests or intrusive methods like HASPI. However, these methods require clean…
The Shout Crisis Text Line provides individuals undergoing mental health crises an opportunity to have an anonymous text message conversation with a trained Crisis Volunteer (CV). This project partners with Shout and its parent…
Hand interactions are increasingly used as the primary input modality in immersive environments, but they are not always feasible due to situational impairments, motor limitations, and environmental constraints. Speech interfaces have been…
Automated speech intelligibility assessment is pivotal for hearing aid (HA) development. In this paper, we present three novel methods to improve intelligibility prediction accuracy and introduce MBI-Net+, an enhanced version of MBI-Net,…
The cocktail party problem comprises the challenging task of understanding a speech signal in a complex acoustic environment, where multiple speakers and background noise signals simultaneously interfere with the speech signal of interest.…
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems often falter while processing stuttering-related disfluencies -- such as involuntary blocks and word repetitions -- yielding inaccurate transcripts. A critical barrier to progress is the scarcity…
Dysarthric speech recognition (DSR) enhances the accessibility of smart devices for dysarthric speakers with limited mobility. Previously, DSR research was constrained by the fact that existing datasets typically consisted of isolated…
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are known to be sensitive to the sociolinguistic variability of speech data, in which gender plays a crucial role. This can result in disparities in recognition accuracy between male and female…
Public speaking is an essential skill in everyone's professional or academic career. Nevertheless, honing this skill is often tricky because training in front of a mirror does not give feedback or inspire the same anxiety as present-ing in…
With the advances in speech communication systems such as online conferencing applications, we can seamlessly work with people regardless of where they are. However, during online meetings, speech quality can be significantly affected by…
Recently, almost all conferences have moved to virtual mode due to the pandemic-induced restrictions on travel and social gathering. Contrary to in-person conferences, virtual conferences face the challenge of efficiently scheduling talks,…
In the realm of human-computer interaction, fostering a natural dialogue between humans and machines is paramount. A key, often overlooked, component of this dialogue is the use of interjections such as "mmm" and "hmm". Despite their…
We describe a system that generates speaker-annotated transcripts of meetings by using a virtual microphone array, a set of spatially distributed asynchronous recording devices such as laptops and mobile phones. The system is composed of…
Current research environments are witnessing high enormities of presentations occurring in different sessions at academic conferences. This situation makes it difficult for researchers (especially juniors) to attend the right presentation…
Virtual Reality (VR) users often experience postural instability, i.e., balance problems, which could be a major barrier to universal usability and accessibility for all, especially for persons with balance impairments. Prior research has…
Purpose - Inefficient hiring may result in lower productivity and higher training costs. Productivity losses caused by absenteeism at work cost U.S. employers billions of dollars each year. Also, employers typically spend a considerable…
Speaker verification (SV) provides billions of voice-enabled devices with access control, and ensures the security of voice-driven technologies. As a type of biometrics, it is necessary that SV is unbiased, with consistent and reliable…
Objective: Chronic pain is a critical public health issue affecting approximately 20% of the adult population in the United States. Given the opioid crisis, there has been an urgent focus on non-addictive pain management methods including…