1. Research at MIT
1.1 Research at MIT and ASA Meeting
Until September 2004, I was visiting Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for one year. At MIT, I was a Visiting Scientist of the Speech Communication Group of Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) and conducted research activities with Prof. Kenneth N. Stevens, the head of the group.
The achievements at MIT include a presentation at the seminar of the Speech Communication Group at MIT followed by a poster presentation at the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) meeting in New York in May for which many researchers showed their interest [2004_19]. I am currently finalizing them in a paper to be submitted to the Journal of Acoustical Society of America (JASA) soon.
The ASA meeting in New York was very special because it was the 75th anniversary of ASA. I also participated in the banquet celebrating the anniversary held during the conference. Three former presidents who received the National Medal of Science were also invited, and they drew considerable attention. They were Leo Beranek, Kenneth N. Stevens, James Flanagan. Interestingly, Prof. Stevens obtained his doctorate under Prof. Beranek while he was teaching at MIT, and Prof. Stevens then went on to succeed Prof. Beranek’s position to teach at the institute, and obtaining the doctoral degree under him was Prof. Flanagan, so the three of them have a professor and student relationship. Furthermore, they received the medals in the reversed order. (I wrote about this in detail in [2004_16].)
My itinerary was a very satisfying one in which I visited the open house of the Department of Speech and Hearing of City University of New York (CUNY), Haskins Laboratory, and Dr. Dan Ellis of Columbia University concurrently during the conference.
1.2 ICA 2004 and Education in Acoustics
During my stay at MIT, there was another major event. This was the International Congress on Acoustics (ICA) held in Kyoto in April, 2004. As I was in the U.S., I returned to Japan briefly to attend this international conference which ironically was held in Japan. I was asked to serve as the organizer of the session on Education in Acoustics, ICA, and in relation to this was kept very busy since a year before contacting invited speakers, as well as keeping in close touch with other conference committee members such as the other organizers, Prof. Thomas Rossing, Prof. Koichi Yoshihisa of Meijo University, Prof. Hideki Tachibana of the University of Tokyo, Prof. Yôiti Suzuki of Tohoku University. (Invited speakers of the session included session organizers Prof. Rossing and myself, the next ASA president candidate Prof. Anthony Atchley, Prof. William Hartmann, Prof. Donald Campbell, Prof. Dawn Behne, etc.)
Because a demo exhibition was also scheduled during the session on Education in Acoustics, we invited “Stray Cats“, a group of physics teachers at high school, to participate with the recommendation of Prof. Rossing. I myself was also invited to give lectures at the both sessions on Hearing Aids [2004_09] and Education in Acoustics [2004_10], as well as I gave an invited demo on vocal tract models with Eri Maeda and other members of Arai Lab. [2004_11]. We also showed the same demo in the Academic Exhibition. The demos by “Stray Cats” and our Lab. were taken up in the NHK evening local news. This experience has become one of our fondest memories.
The invited lecture [2004_09] that I gave in the session on Hearing Aids discussed the achievements of the Arai Lab. touching on the research works of Keiichi Yasu and Nao Hodoshima. After the session, I participated in the reception with the other invited speakers. I had an enjoyable time with Prof. Brian Moore, Prof. Tammo Houstgast, Dr. Chin-Tuan Tan, Prof. Suzuki of Tohoku University, a session organizer, and the members of his laboratory.
Members of the Arai Lab., Nao Hodoshima, Takahito Goto, Noriko Ohata, and Tsuyoshi Inoue gave a presentation on the improvement of speech intelligibility in a reverberant environment [2004_12]. They also gave a presentation at Room Acoustics: Design and Science (RADS) held as a satellite symposium [2004_13].
In 2003, I served as an organizer of the symposium on “Tools for Teaching Phonetics” at the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS). Again, it proved to be a good experience at ICA 2004. In 2006, there will be the joint meeting of the Acoustical Societies of America and Japan, and I have been appointed the organizer of the session on Education in Acoustics of the meeting, since I am a member of the both committees of Education of the two societies. I will do my best to make use of my experience to hold a successful session.
During the ASA meeting held in New York, I also participated in the Committee of Education, because I have been a member of the committee of Education since 2003 (as mentioned above). I was reunited with Prof. Thomas Rossing and Prof. Anthony Atchley, etc. whom I had worked with during the ICA. In particular, Prof. Rossing introduced my vocal tract model demo to the committee saying that “this was a very interesting demo during the ICA”, and I was delighted when asked to introduce it at the next meeting in San Diego if possible. Unfortunately, circumstances did not allow me to fulfill this request. However, in place, I plan to carry out a demo of the models during the 2006 joint meeting at least.
These activities on the vocal tract model led for me to Q&A on the vocal tract model in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan (JASJ).
Q&A on the vocal tract model (Acoustical Society of Japan, ASJ):
http://www.asj.gr.jp/qanda/answer/139.html
1.3 “From Sound to Sense” Conference Hosted by MIT
During my stay at MIT, a conference called “From Sound to Sense: +50 Years of Discoveries in Speech Communication” to celebrate 50+ years of teaching by Prof. Stevens at MIT was held at MIT (the chair was my officemate, Dr. Janet Slifka, and the co-chair was Dr. Sharon Manuel). Prof. Gunnar Fant of Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) who established the field of modern phonetics together with Prof. Stevens attended to the conference. Taking this as an opportunity, IEEE held a ceremony to give the Flanagan Award to both Prof. Stevens and Prof. Fant at the conference venue. Prof. Flanagan is one of the three professors mentioned in the section on ASA earlier. Though Prof. Flanagan was a student of Prof. Stevens, he contributed tremendously to the progress of speech science and technology at the Bell Laboratories after graduating, and to commemorate this, the Flanagan Award was established at IEEE.
This conference was also participated by numerous authorities of speech fields from both inside and outside the country such as Prof. Peter Ladefoged of University of California, Los Angels (UCLA) and Prof. John J. Ohala of University of California, Berkeley (UCB). From Japan, Prof. Hiroya Fujisaki, professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo who leads the speech field in Japan and Prof. Keikichi Hirose of the University of Tokyo (both have had the experience of visiting Prof. Stevens for a long period). During the banquet, I gave two bottles of wine to Prof. Stevens as a gift with Prof. Fujisaki, and this has also become a fond memory. Prof. Stevens also received a gift from his laboratory in the form of a scrap book filled with memorable photographs; we helped out with pasting the photographs, and this has also become a very valuable memory.
There were also many participants from MIT: Dr. Ben Gold of the MIT Lincoln Lab., the father of digital signal processing and the first person who published the first textbook “Digital Processing of Signals” in 1969; Prof. Alan Oppenheim of RLE, the world-leading professor in the field of digital signal processing; Prof. Victor Zue, who used be a member of the Speech Communication Group and is currently the co-director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) recently housed in the Stata Center, the venue of this conference; Prof. Morris Halle of the Department of Linguistics, who is one of the most well-known phonologists in the world.
During this conference, I also gave a poster presentation. I talked about the history of Chiba and Kajiyama, the authors of “The Vowel: Its Nature and Structure” which contributed to the founding of the modern Phonetics, and their influence on many speech scientists such as Prof. Stevens and Prof. Fant in a presentation I thought best fit for the purpose of this conference. (Prof. Chiba became a professor at Sophia University after writing this book, and set up the Phonetics Laboratory.) With the result that I also included interviews on these professors, Prof. Stevens expressed his delight, calling it to be very valuable resource (details in [2004_16]).
During the conference, we had an open house of the Speech Communication Group. I was assigned a room to give a demo on vocal tract models. Many people came to look at my models including Prof. Fant. Since Dr. Kiyoshi Honda of ATR also brought his precise model of vocal tract based on MRI, he happened to show it next to me. As for the vocal tract model, it was again recognized for its high educational effects and won a high reputation.
Prof. Stevens also liked my vocal tract model very much. During my stay at MIT, I attended several classes on speech communication taught by Prof. Stevens, and I had a couple of chances to give lectures using my vocal tract models in his classes. First, I talked briefly about the basics of vowel production, and then carry out the actual demo using the model. I was impressed by the unique questions the MIT students asked, and I found myself having to respond to very sophisticated questions, which proved to be a very valuable experience.
After the conference, due to the many requests to learn more about the achievements of Chiba and Kajiyama in Speech Communication Group, a reading group for “The Vowel” was held. I led it, explaining that science and technology in Japan was the state of the art in the world at that time, and Chiba and Kajiyama contributed enormously to the dawn of modern speech science. I ordered 10 volumes of “The Vowel (second edition)” by Chiba and Kajiyama from the Phonetic Society of Japan, and gave them to the participants, who were truly delighted in obtaining such a valuable book.
“From Sound to Sense” Conference:
http://www.rle.mit.edu/soundtosense/
1.4 Dr. Ben Gold, Digital Signal Processing and Vocal Tract Model
As mentioned earlier, Dr. Gold was the first person in the world to systematize digital signal processing (DSP), and published a book entitled “Digital Processing of Signals” in 1969. After retiring from MIT Lincoln Lab., he gave a series of lectures on speech signal processing at UC Berkeley every two years. When I was in Berkeley in 1997, I had a chance to attend his lecture. His office was also located in our institute, International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), allowing me to have meetings with him personally almost every week. Owing to this background, we had been very close ever since.
In fact, the opportunity to visit MIT this time was realized through the introduction of Prof. Stevens to me by Dr. Gold. He was a good friend of Prof. Stevens. When Dr. Gold spent one year at Prof. Stevens’ lab., he gave the first lecture on DSP in the world at MIT. After that, DSP was succeeded by Prof. Oppenheim of MIT, and today, the most well-known DSP textbook would be “Discrete-Time Signal Processing” written by Oppenheim and Schafer. By such turn of fate, I have been visiting Prof. Stevens’s lab. since the summer of 2000. At first, I spent only about one month in summer, and this became an annual practice, eventually leading to this one-year visit.
During this stay, Dr. Gold invited me several times to his home, where I had a very good time. Although I never had the opportunity to show him my vocal tract model during these visits, the chance came when Dr. Gold came to say goodbye just before I was to leave MIT. Looking at the model, Dr. Gold said happily “please do come to my lecture at Berkeley next time and show this to my students.” After this conversation, and just as I was about to say my last farewell, Prof. Oppenheim appeared quite coincidentally. Dr. Gold called out “Al! Al!” to which Prof. Oppenheim replied “Hi, Ben!”. Apparently, it had been quite a long time since they last met, and the following is a photo of the reunion.
By the way, I had an opportunity to attend lectures on DSP by Prof. Oppenheim in the last few weeks of my stay at MIT. Though it was quite unfortunate that I had to leave halfway through the term, I was able to acquire a lot during that short time. I hope to pass on what I had achieved during Dr. Gold’s lectures at Berkeley, Prof. Stevens’ lectures and Prof. Oppenheim’s lectures at MIT to my own lectures.
Regarding Dr. Gold’s request that I show my model to the students at Berkeley, we talked about possibilities over and over again. At one time, it was suggested that he shows them a video, but eventually, I promised him that I would go to Berkeley and give a lecture and demo. We had been making detailed arrangements. However, it is very sad that Dr. Gold passed away suddenly on January 15, 2005. I deeply regret the passing of him.
1.5 Reunion with Other Professors
1.5.1 Prof. Sadaoki Furui of Tokyo Institute of Technology
During my stay at MIT, Prof. Furui visited my home in Cambridge.
1.5.2 Prof. John J. Ohala of University of California, Berkeley
During my visit to Berkeley, Prof. Ohala invited me to his home and promised that he would write a review paper in a special issue I am in charge of.
2. Invited Paper to IEICE Transactions
During the Speech and Hearing Meeting held at ATR in June 2003, Dr. Steven Greenberg of the Speech Institute and I held “Speech Dynamics by Ear, Eye, Mouth and Machine” as an international workshop, jointly for a day. Based on this, a special issue was published in IEICE Transactions “D: on Information and Systems”, in which I was involved as an editor. This special issue carried our paper as an invited paper [2004_01].
3. Awards
3.1 ASJ Poster Award
During the ASJ meeting held in the fall of 2003, the poster presentation by Noriko Ohata, a student graduating from the Arai Lab. was awarded the poster award of the meeting [2003_28]. The award-giving ceremony was held during the ASJ spring meeting in 2004.
3.2 Student Paper Award at NCSP
During the 2004 international workshop on Nonlinear Circuit and Signal Processing (NCSP), Yoshio Konno, a student at the Arai Lab. received the Student Paper Award [2004_14].
3.3 Yasu Receives Student Scholarship Award at IHCON
Keiichi Yasu of the Arai Lab. who participated and gave a presentation at the International Hearing Aid Research Conference (IHCON), which held every other year received the Student Scholarship Award, and participated in the conference as a scholarship student [2004_20]. This paper discusses the achievements of the Hearing Aids Project of the Arai Lab. (Kei Kobayashi is a collaborative researcher). Prof. Brian Moore has been inquiring about this research since some time ago, and during the conference, many researchers including Dr. Chin-Tuan Tan provided various comments, resulting in a very fruitful presentation.
4. Special issue for the China-Japan Joint Conference has published
During the China-Japan Joint Conference on Acoustics in Nanjing, China in December 2002, four members from the Arai Lab. (Nao Hodoshima, Keiichi Yasu, Eri Maeda, and Toru Miyoshi) gave presentations, and all four presentations were published in special issue of the “Acoustical Science and Technology” for the Commemoration of the China-Japan Joint Conference on Acoustics 2002, as Acoustical Letters [2004_04, 2004_05, 2004_06, 2004_07].
5. Invited Lecture at Sophia Symposium
A Sophia Symposium “New technology and the investigation of the articulatory process” was held at Sophia University in December 2004, and as an invited speaker, I introduced the achievement of the research at MIT. This symposium was hosted by Prof. Tsutomu Sugawara (the head of the Phonetics Laboratory, Department of Linguistics, Sophia University), Prof. Haruko Miyakoda of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and Prof. Shin’ichi Tokuma of Chuo University. Famous professors were also invited to speak from overseas such as Prof. William Hardcastle and Prof. Maureen Stone, resulting in a very valuable experience. It also proved to be an excellent opportunity to prove at home and abroad that Sophia University is an interdisciplinary research center of speech science.
6. International and Domestic Collaborations
6.1 MIT
During my visit, I conducted research with Prof. Stevens as described in Section 1. Dr. Joe Perkell helped me for the EMMA (electromagnetic midsagittal articulometer) measurement. I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to the Prof. Stevens and all members of the Speech Communication Group for providing so many different valuable opportunities.
6.2 The Speech Institute
The collaboration with Dr. Steven Greenberg was published in IEICE Transactions as an invited paper in 2004 (see Section 2).
6.3 National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research (NCRAR)
I visited NCRAR again in the summer of 2004, and met Dr. Stephen Fausti, Dr. Nancy Vaughan, and Roger Ellingson. Akiko Kusumoto, a student who graduated from the Arai Lab. joined the organization as an engineer. Her master’s thesis was published in the journal of Speech Communication with the help of Dr. Vaughan. I became close with Roger Ellingson during ICA 2004, and was able to visit his home in the summer of 2004.
6.4 NTNU（Norwegian University of Science and Technology）
Nao Hodoshima, a student of the Arai Lab. has studied abroad since the summer of 2004. She is currently doing on a collaborative research between NTNU and the Arai Lab. under Prof. Peter Svensson and Prof. Dawn Behne. They are friends of mine, and also we have been working on the same research fields from long ago.
6.5 University of Arizona
We are still collaborating each other with Dr. Natasha Warner of Department of Linguistics. Results are discussed in [2004_21].
6.6 University of Maryland
Maria Chait, a PhD student at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Lab. visited Arai Lab. as part of a collaborative research from December 2003 to January 2004, carrying out experiments mainly with Takuma Okuda of Arai Lab.
6.7 Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico
We talked about distance learning with Dr. Kay Berkling.
6.8 Ishikawa National College of Technology
We are collaborating with Prof. Noboru Kanedera in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Project (members: Kenji Okada and Kenji Asai) and Gmac Project (see Section 7.2).
6.9 Health Sciences University of Hokkaido
The results of the collaboration with Mr. Masahiko Komatsu who has been at the Arai Lab. as a collaborative researcher have been published in several papers [2004_08, 2004_18, 2004_24].
7. Industry-University Cooperation
7.1 NTT Advanced Technology Co. (NTT-AT)
Vocal tract model VTM-10 provided by Arai Lab. continues to receive high reputation.
Educational tool of vocal tract model VTM-10:
http://www.ntt-at.co.jp/product/vtm10/
7.2 Fujiyama, Inc.
Through the successful matchmaking at Tokyo Technology Forum participated by Sophia Liaison Office (SLO), a collaboration was launched with Fujiyama Inc. (president: Ms. Junko Yoshii) from 2004. Project members from the Arai Lab. include Tooru Miyoshi, Kenji Asai, Kanade Kuriyama, Osashi Fukami, and Yuki Fujikashi. During academic year 2004, we provided development and technical guidance on a system which detects speech portions (especially for relatively clear speech sounds) and write time codes as a part of the subtitling system for digital movies.
Fujiyama, Inc.:
http://www.fujiyama1.com/
7.3 TOA Co.
Interactions with TOA are well underway in the area of preprocessing for improving intelligibility of speech, that Arai Lab. has developed for public address systems. We visited the XEBEC Hall in Kobe in April 2004, and met with Mr. Kiyohiro Kurisu and those at TOA. After that we carried out several discussions with Mr. Kurisu, and eventually were able to conduct a large-scale perceptual experiment in the XEBEC Hall. Project members from the Arai Lab. include Nao Hodoshima, Tsuyoshi Inoue, Takahito Goto, Nahoko Hayashi, Yusuke Miyauchi. (Fumihiro Tadokoro also participated in the experiment at the XEBEC Hall.)
TOA Co.:
http://www.toa.co.jp/
8. Integration of Humanities and Science & Technology at Sophia University
8.1 Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A-2, 16203041)
The research theme “Development of Support System for Communication Disorders and Research on Application to Clinical Situation” applied jointly with Prof. Kyoko Iitaka, Prof. Mitsuko Shindo, Ms. Sawako Hirai (Research Center for Communication Disorders, Sophia University), Ms. Akemi Iida (School of Media Science, Tokyo University of Technology) etc. with Prof. Tsutomu Sugawara (Department of Linguistics, Sophia University) as the representative researcher was accepted, and from 2004, the new project on the integration of humanities and science & technology was launched for four years. The Arai Lab. in particular conducted various studies on hearing-impaired and/or elderly people on two out of the three main themes “Development of Easy to Listen Amplification Speech Processing in Reverberant Environment for Hearing-Impaired Listeners,” “Development of Speech Processing Algorithms for Hearing Aids and their Application to Practical Situations,” and “Investigation on Relation between Visual and Auditory Information for Communication Disorders” [2004_04, 2004_05, 2004_09, 2004_12, 2004_13, 2004_20]. We are also planning to cooperate actively in the remaining one theme “Development of Communication Support System for Communication Disorders and Application to Clinical Situation.”
8.2 Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B-2, 14310132)
We successfully concluded the third year of the project “Diagnosis of Children with Difficulties in Written Language Learning and Basic and Clinical Studies on Development of Guidance Program” carried out jointly with Prof. Tsutomu Sugawara, Prof. Jun’ichi Kasajima (Department of Linguistics), etc. led by Prof. Kyoko Iitaka as the representative researcher. 2005 will be the last year of the project.
8.3 Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C-2, 15530629)
We successfully concluded the second year of the project “Analysis of Phonological Processing Ability of Children with Developmental Phonological Disorders and Development of their Remedial Teaching” carried out jointly with Prof. Kyoko Iitaka, with Ms. Sawako Hirai as the representative researcher. 2005 will be the last year of the project. Keiichi Yasu from the Arai Lab. is participating in this project actively, and experiments have started on a full-scale. A complete report will be available in 2005.
8.4 Hi-Tech Research Center Project
The “Exploration of Fundamental Technologies for Building Environment-Conscious Society” launched in 1999 with Prof. Koh-ichi Segawa of the Department of Chemistry ended successfully in March 2004.
8.5 On-Campus Joint Research (1)
The on-campus joint research “Development of Education and Research Program on Human Care Science” with Prof. Konosuke Kumakura of the Life Science Institute as representative launched in 2002 ended successfully in 2004.
8.6 On-Campus Joint Research (2)
The on-campus joint research “Research on Learning Environment and Educational Material Development on Computer Using Diverse Languages” with Prof. Yuriko Takahashi of the Faculty of Comparative Culture as representative launched in 2002 ended successfully in 2004.
8.7 On-Campus Joint Research (3)
The on-campus joint research “Investigation of Language Development Characteristics of Children with Developmental Phonological Disorders, Development of Early Diagnosis Program, and Application to Therapy” with Ms. Sawako Hirai as representative launched in 2003 ended its second year. Full-scale experiments with Keiichi Yasu of Arai Lab. have started, and the project is currently ongoing together with the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research projects (will complete on March 31, 2006).
8.8 Department of Linguistics, Phonetics Laboratory
Collaboration is carried out with Prof. Tsutomu Sugawara and the members of the Phonetics Laboratory. In February 2004, I served as a thesis committee for the defense of the master’s thesis of Ms. Kanae Amino. (The title was “The Availability of the Nasal Consonants in Aural Speaker Identification: Verified by Perception Tests in Japanese and by Acoustic Analysis”.) The thesis defence was held while I was at MIT, so we carried out a video conference via the Internet. This was our first such attempt without any major problems, but it proved to be a valuable attempt by opening the path for overseas professors to participate as committees.
In December 2004, a doctoral thesis defense was held for Prof. Isao Shimomura, a graduate of the Phonetics Laboratory, and I served as a thesis committee. (The dissertation was about Jews-harp in Ainu.) I also asked Prof. Sugawara to be a thesis committee for the defense of the master’s thesis of Eri Maeda who graduated from the Arai Lab. in 2004.
8.9 Research Center for Communication Disorders
Collaboration is carried out with Prof. Kyoko Iitaka, Prof. Mitsuko Shindo, Ms. Sawako Hirai, and members of the Research Center for Communication Disorders. For example, graduates to whom I guided for their master’s thesis gave presentations in 2004 [2004_03, 2004_22]. I was also given the opportunity to provide partial guidance to some of the graduates who wrote their master’s thesis in 2004.
8.10 Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Lab.
Collaboration is carried out with Prof. Chikashi Michimata and the members of the Cognitive Psychology Laboratory. Especially from the graduate studies in 2004, Keiko Kuwahara of our lab. presented very interesting results on the lateralization of the brain in speech perception. Takuma Okuda will continue the same project as his master’s thesis in 2005.
9. Contributions and Activities for Societies, Patents, etc.
9.1 Supervising an Exhibition of the Shizuoka Science Museum “Ru-Ku-Ru”
As the vocal tract model which I developed began to receive high reputation for its significance as an educational tool in Acoustics, Uchida Yoko Co., Ltd. asked me to supervise an exhibition using the models as a part of the exhibitions where children can “see, listen, and touch” at the Shizuoka Science Museum. After several discussions, it was decided that the two vocal tract models will be put on display at the museum which opened in March 2004. The exhibition booth called “Mechanism of Speech” explains how vowels are created. For instance, when a bellows is pressed, the five vowels are produced from the cylinder-type model. The children can create any vowel they like by rearranging the plate-type model as if playing with a puzzle. Nearby is a video and animation display explaining the mechanism of speech.
Shizuoka Science Museum “Ru-Ku-Ru”:
http://www.rukuru.jp/
9.2 Promotion to IEEE Senior Member
I was promoted to Senior Member of IEEE in September 2004 with references from Prof. Stevens, Dr. Gold, and Prof. Furui.
9.3 Member of the Speech Technical Committee, IEICE
I have been serving as a member of Speech Technical Committee, The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) and ASJ since 2002, and due to my visit to MIT, I handed over my position to the next candidate in September 2003. During my service, I was given the opportunity to acquire various valuable experiences such as planning for the international symposium at ATR in June 2003 (see Section 2).
9.4 Phonetic Society of Japan (PSJ)
At PSJ, I have been a member of the planning committee since 2001. Because I had also served as a member of Speech Technical Committee, IEICE and ASJ as mentioned above during the same time, I proposed and planned holding the Speech Meeting of IEICE and PSJ regular research meeting jointly. I had also planned the international symposium in June 2003 the previous year, so I was able to concurrently hold the joint meeting at ATR in June 2004 with the ASJ Technical Committee of Psychological and Physiological Acoustics. I have continued to be a member of the planning committee after 2004, and from 2004, have also been serving as a councilor.
9.5 Patent Application
I have been proposing modulation filtering as a preprocessing technique of speech signals to prevent degradation of speech intelligibility in reverberant environments since some time ago, and have disclosed the related patent application (Patent 2001-100774). In addition, I have also applied for a patent titled “Speech Processing Device” in relation to new algorithm of the steady-state suppression (particularly processing based on FFT suitable for real-time processing). The inventors are Takayuki Arai, Nao Hodoshima, and Takahito Goto.
9.6 Books
Of the series of books published by Kaibundo which we translated, the fifth edition of “Acoustic Analysis of Speech” was reprinted on April 1, 2004. Since the first edition was published in 1996, we are very pleased that it has been read by many as a textbook, etc.
10. Titles of the Theses
10.1 Master’s Theses
Kenji Asai
Automatic Speech Recognition based on the Different Contribution of Modulation Frequency
Component with respect to Each Frequency Band
Eri Maeda
Studies on Physical Models to Visualize Human Vocal Tract for Assistance in Acoustic
Education
Tsuyoshi Inoue
A Study on Pre-Processing Method for Improving Sentence Intelligibility of Speech in
Reverberant Environments
Tooru Miyoshi
Voice Activity Detection aimed at Application of Subtitle Multimedia Contents