Using unified automatic speech recognition and synthesis system for cross-language acoustic modeling
(2012)
Artificial intelligence experienced a technological breakthrough in science, industry, and everyday life in the recent few decades. The advancements can be credited to the ever-increasing availability and miniaturization of computational resources that resulted in exponential data growth. However, because of the insufficient amount of data in some cases, employing machine learning in solving complex tasks is not straightforward or even possible. As a result, machine learning with small data experiences rising importance in data science and application in several fields. The authors focus on interpreting the general term of "small data" and their engineering and industrial application role. They give a brief overview of the most important industrial applications of machine learning and small data. Small data is defined in terms of various characteristics compared to big data, and a machine learning formalism was introduced. Five critical challenges of machine learning with small data in industrial applications are presented: unlabeled data, imbalanced data, missing data, insufficient data, and rare events. Based on those definitions, an overview of the considerations in domain representation and data acquisition is given along with a taxonomy of machine learning approaches in the context of small data.
In this paper we show how word class based language modeling can support the integration of a small language in modern applications of speech technology. The methods described in this paper can be applied for any language. We demonstrate the methods on Upper Sorbian. The word classes model the semantic expressions of numerals, date and time of day. The implementation of the created grammars was realized in the form of finite-state-transducers (FSTs) and minimalists grammars (MGs). We practically demonstrate the usage of the FSTs in a simple smart-home speech application, that is able to set wake-up alarms and appointments expressed in a variety of spontaneous and natural sentences. While the created MGs are not integrated in an application for practical use yet, they provide evidence that MGs could potentially work more efficient than FSTs in built-on applications. In particular, MGs can work with a significantly smaller lexicon size, since their more complex structure lets them generate more expressions with less items, while still avoiding wrong expressions.
We present a data-driven approach for the quantitative analysis of glottal stops before word-initial vowels in Upper Sorbian, a West Slavic minority language spoken in Germany. Glottal stops are word-boundary markers and their detection can improve the performance of automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis systems.
We employed cross-language transfer using an acoustic model in German to develop a forced-alignment method for the phonetic segmentation of a read-speech corpus in Upper Sorbian. The missing phonemic units were created by combining the existing phoneme models. In the forced-alignment procedure, the glottal stops were considered optional in front of word-initial vowels.
To investigate the influence of speaker type (males, females, and children) and vowel on the occurrence of glottal stops, binomial regression analysis with a generalized linear mixed model was performed. Results show that children glottalize word-initial vowels more frequently than adults, and that glottal stop occurrences are influenced by vowel quality.
We present a method for extracting health indicators from piezoelectric sensors applied in the case of microfluidic valves. Convolutional autoencoders were used to train a model on the normal operating conditions and tested on signals of different valves. The results of the model performance evaluation, as well as, the qualitative presentation of the indicator plots for each tested component, showed that the used approach is capable of detecting features that correspond to increasing component degradation. The extracted health indicators are the prerequisite and input for reliable remaining useful life prediction.
Künstliche Intelligenz zieht derzeit in alle Bereiche der Gesellschaft und des Lebens ein. Aber welchen Stellenwert hat sie momentan auf dem Gebiet der zerstörungsfreien Prüfung? Was kann KI leisten? Welche Herausforderungen müssen erfolgreich bewältigt werden? Gibt es das eine KI-Verfahren, welches prinzipiell für ZfP geeignet ist? Bei der Bauteil- und Materialprüfung während und unmittelbar nach der Herstellung, der Überwachung von Verschleißteilen in Maschinen und Anlagen oder der Schadensdetektion an Bauteilen und Komponenten liefern ZfP-Verfahren Daten, die bewertet werden müssen. Obwohl inzwischen sehr leistungsfähige Toolkits verfügbar sind, erfordert der optimale Einsatz der KI für ein ZfP-Verfahren oftmals mehr. Die meisten Kunden möchten nicht nur eine Lösung ihres Problems; sie wollen verstehen, warum die KI so und nicht anders entschieden hat, warum der Klassifikator das Bauteil einer bestimmten Klasse (z. B. gut/schlecht oder neuwertig/verschlissen/defekt) zugewiesen hat. Abhängig von der Klassifikationsaufgabe sowie der Art und der Anzahl der vorliegenden Daten kann ein geeignetes Verfahren bestimmt werden. Mit Methoden des maschinellen Lernens werden Modelle gebildet, welche die Basis für die KI-Verfahren zur Klassifikation bilden.
Der Beitrag liefert einen Überblick über KI-Verfahren und deren Anwendungen in der zerstörungsfreien Prüfung. Zahlreiche Beispiele und Ergebnisse werden vorgestellt, um die Mannigfaltigkeit des Einsatzes in der ZfP und der bestehenden Möglichkeiten zu demonstrieren.
Softness is one of the essential properties of hygiene tissue products. Reliably measuring it is of utmost importance to ensure the balance between customer expectations and cost-effective tissue production. This study presents a method for assessing softness by analyzing acoustic emissions produced while tearing a tissue specimen. The aim was to train neural network models using the corrected results of human panel tests as the ground truth labels and to predict the tissue softness in two- and three-class recognition tasks. We also investigate the possibility of predicting some production parameters related to the softness property. The results proved that tissue softness and production parameters could be reliably estimated only by the tearing noise.