”Physics-based Voice Simulation Techniques”

Call for Participation

The EUNISON FET-Open European project invites PhD/MS/undergraduate students working on voice modelling or similar topics, and interested researchers to join our one-day Summer School to be held in Florence, Italy, as a satellite event of the 9th International MAVEBA Workshop (Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications), on September 5th, 2015.

Those wishing to attend should submit a brief CV and a letter of motivation as to why they want to attend by filling an online registration form. The deadline for application is 19th June 2015 and the decision of acceptance will be made by the 26th June 2015.

The one-day Summer School attendance is free of charge but participants must fund their own travel, accommodation, and living expenses.

Recommended prior attendance:

MAVEBA workshops on replicas and simulation, and PEVOC Round Table on physic-based voice simulation. The final date and time schedule of these activities will be published soon here.

Tutorials (45 minutes each)

• 09:15-10:00 'FEM modeling of voice production'

Oriol Guasch, La Salle-URL, Barcelona, Spain

Sten Ternström, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

• Boundaries of the voice organ: where should the computational domain end?

• Strategies: split domains, or unified?

• Challenges: fluid-structure interaction, contact, turbulence, aeroacoustics, moving boundaries, infinite domains

• 10:00-10:45 'Reality check'

Xavier Pelorson, GIPSA-Lab, Grenoble, France

Stefan Becker, Friedrich Alexander-Universität, Erlangen, Germany

• The need for physical replicas

• Working with excised specimens

• Imaging techniques relevant to FEM

• 11:15-12:00 'Aerodynamics'

Oriol Guasch, La Salle-URL, Barcelona, Spain

Johan Jansson, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

Joan Baiges, CIMNE-UPC, Barcelona, Spain

• From flow to sound (acoustic analogies and fully compressible simulations)

• Modelling of fricatives

• Fluid-structure interaction

• Generation of the glottal pulse

• 12:00-12.45 'Acoustical modelling of wave propagation'

Oriol Guasch, La Salle-URL, Barcelona, Spain

• 1d, 2d and 3d modelling

• Radiation: what to do with the infinite field

• Modelling of vowels

• Wave propagation in moving vocal tracts

• Modelling of diphthongs

• 14.15-15:00 'Biomechanical modelling of the voice organ'

Olov Engwall and Örjan Ekeberg, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

• The vocal tract is not an object

• The glottis is not an object

• How deep the skin? Tissue properties

• Controlling the oral and laryngeal structures

• Data from humans – what have we got?

• Data from humans – what have we got?

• 15:00-15.45 'Orders of magnitude, and feasibility'

Johan Jansson and Sten Ternström KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

• Coupling the slow and the fast domains

• Parallel computing and voice problems

• Cheating: Hybrid models

• Dissemination: Providing wide access

• 16:00-17:00 'Group study session'

• Interfacing users to the simulations, application scenarios. For example: phonetics, phoniatrics, logopedics, voice pedagogy, language teaching

• 17:00-17.15 'Summary and adjourn'

Organizers

This one-day Summer School is organized by the FET European project EUNISON (Extensive UNIfied-domain SimulatiON of the human voice).

In the EUNISON project, we seek to build a new voice simulator that is based on physical first principles to an unprecedented degree. From given inputs, representing topology or muscle activations or phonemes, it will render the 3-D physics of the voice, including of course its acoustic output. This will give important insights into how the voice works, and how it fails. The goal is not a speech synthesis system, but rather a voice simulation engine, with many applications; given the right controls and enough computer time, it could be made to speak in any language, or sing in any style. The model will be operable on-line, as a reference and a platform for others to exploit in further studies. The long-term prospects include more natural speech synthesis, improved clinical procedures, greater public awareness of voice, better voice pedagogy and new forms of cultural expression.

More information at www.eunison.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 30887

Contacts

• Dr. Sten Ternström (Project Coordinator), KTH, Stockholm, Sweden (stern@kth.se)

• Dr. Oriol Guasch (Scientific Coordinator), La Salle-URL, Barcelona, Spain (oguasch@salleurl.edu)

• Dr. Francesc Alías (WP8-”Dissemination, Collaboration and Exploitation” leader), La Salle-URL, Barcelona, Spain (falias@salleurl.edu)