@InProceedings{Howard2016_320,
author = {Ian S. Howard},
booktitle = {Studientexte zur Sprachkommunikation: Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung 2016},
title = {Towards a Mechanical Vocal Apparatus for Vowel Production},
year = {2016},
editor = {Oliver Jokisch},
month = mar,
pages = {23--30},
publisher = {TUDpress, Dresden},
abstract = {Here we describe preliminary results in the construction of a mechanical
vocal apparatus. The design employs an elliptical tongue of fixed radii and a linear
jaw and lip section that move within a mouth cavity. The dimension and geometries
of the articulators and mouth were found by fitting them to published human vocal
tract data. The dataset used consisted of the vocal tract area functions for a single
male speaker for the production of nine American English vowels. The fit was
achieved using an optimization running in Matlab, which minimized the mean-square
error arising from the target vocal tract area functions with the area arising from the
gap between the articulators and the roof of the mouth. The articulators and mouth
roof dimension were optimised over the entire set of vowels, and the location of the
articulators was found for each individual vowel. The optimized vocal tract parts
were imported into a CAD package and incorporated into the design of the vocal
apparatus. This was then built using 3D printing technology. A horn driver unit was
attached to the lower end of the assembly and driven by a voice source model to
simulate voiced glottal excitation. We present preliminary results from the
mechanical vocal tract for several vowel sounds which were achieved by moving the
articulators by hand, and make a comparison to the acoustic output achieved from a
male speaker and to a control set of 3D printed tubes based directly on the published
vowel cross-sectional area data.},
isbn = {978-3-959080-40-8},
issn = {0940-6832},
keywords = {Sprachproduktion, Sprachtherapie und Diagnostik},
url = {https://www.essv.de/pdf/2016_23_30.pdf},
}