Deep Learning for Distant Speech Recognition

Deep learning is an emerging technology that is considered one of the most promising directions for reaching higher levels of artificial intelligence. Among the other achievements, building computers that understand speech represents a crucial leap towards intelligent machines. Despite the great efforts of the past decades, however, a natural and robust human-machine speech interaction still appears to be out of reach, especially when users interact with a distant microphone in noisy and reverberant environments. The latter disturbances severely hamper the intelligibility of a speech signal, making Distant Speech Recognition (DSR) one of the major open challenges in the field. This thesis addresses the latter scenario and proposes some novel techniques, architectures, and algorithms to improve the robustness of distant-talking acoustic models. We first elaborate on methodologies for realistic data contamination, with a particular emphasis on DNN training with simulated data. We then investigate on approaches for better exploiting speech contexts, proposing some original methodologies for both feed-forward and recurrent neural networks. Lastly, inspired by the idea that cooperation across different DNNs could be the key for counteracting the harmful effects of noise and reverberation, we propose a novel deep learning paradigm called network of deep neural networks. The analysis of the original concepts were based on extensive experimental validations conducted on both real and simulated data, considering different corpora, microphone configurations, environments, noisy conditions, and ASR tasks.Comment: PhD Thesis Unitn, 201

Review of Research on Speech Technology: Main Contributions From Spanish Research Groups

In the last two decades, there has been an important increase in research on speech technology in Spain, mainly due to a higher level of funding from European, Spanish and local institutions and also due to a growing interest in these technologies for developing new services and applications. This paper provides a review of the main areas of speech technology addressed by research groups in Spain, their main contributions in the recent years and the main focus of interest these days. This description is classified in five main areas: audio processing including speech, speaker characterization, speech and language processing, text to speech conversion and spoken language applications. This paper also introduces the Spanish Network of Speech Technologies (RTTH. Red Temática en Tecnologías del Habla) as the research network that includes almost all the researchers working in this area, presenting some figures, its objectives and its main activities developed in the last years

Event-Marketing as Innovative Marketing Communications: Reviewing the German Experience

As a result of significant changes in their marketing environments and in consumer behaviour, marketers are confronted with the decreasing effectiveness of their classic marketing communications (Kroeber-Riel 1984) and, consequently, in need of new ways to position their brands in consumers’ minds. Because nothing is more convincing than personal experiences (Nickel 1998), event-marketing creates new brand-related realities by staging marketing-events with which consumers interact. This would result in an emotional attachment to the brand (Zanger and Sistenich 1996). However, while event-marketing as an experience-oriented marketing communication strategy has become very popular among German marketing professionals and academics, researchers and marketers in English-speaking countries have widely ignored this innovative communication strategy so far due to a different understanding of the term (Cornwell 1995). Nevertheless, some European companies have successfully launched in recent years their first event-marketing campaigns in Ireland, the UK and the US, suggesting a much broader appeal than previously recognised. Thus, this paper is introducing event-marketing to an international audience by outlining its constitutive features and discussing its role in marketing communications, based on the lessons learned from the German experience, that are presented using mini-case studies

Pathologic Myopia: Complications and Visual Rehabilitation

High myopia, defined as refractive error of at least −6.00D or an axial length of 26.5 mm or more, can induce many modifications in eye’s anatomy that can lead to complications. When high myopia is able to decrease best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) due to its complications, it is called pathologic myopia. Pathologic myopia is one of the major causes of blindness, and it represents a serious issue, since incidence of myopia and high myopia is constantly rising. For educational purposes, in this chapter, complications of pathologic myopia will be divided into anterior (when structures external to the globe or anterior to the ora serrata are involved, such as motility disturbances and cataract) and posterior (when structures posterior to the ora serrata are involved, such as lacquer cracks, chorioretinal atrophy, Fuchs maculopathy, myopic choroidal neovascularization, and retinal detachment). Many treatments are available for pathologic myopia complications depending on their type, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) injections and surgery. We will focus on visual rehabilitation interventions, such as visual biofeedback and visual aids that in many cases are the only chance that the ophthalmologist has in order to help patients suffering from pathologic myopia to use at their maximum their residual vision