Development of Electrolarynx by Multi-agent Technology and Mobile Devices for Prosody Control

Abstract

The feasibility of using a motion sensor to replace a conventional electrolarynx (EL) user interface was explored. A mobile phone motion sensor with multi-agent platform was used to investigate on/off and pitch frequency control capability. A very small battery operated ARM-based control unit was also developed to evaluate the motion sensor based user-interface. The control unit was placed on the wrist and the vibration device was placed against the throat using support bandage. Two different conversion methods were used for the forearm tilt angle to pitch frequency conversion: linear mapping method and F0 template-based method. A perceptual evaluation was performed with two well-trained normal speakers and ten subjects. The results of the evaluation study showed that both methods were able to produce better speech quality in terms of naturalness.