Speech and Audio Capture in Adverse Environments

Project Information

SPOTFORMING

Grant agreement ID: 237246

Project closed

Start date 1 February 2010

End date 31 October 2010

Funded under

• Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Total cost € 182 484,78

EU contribution € 182 484,78

Coordinated by

IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE
United Kingdom

Objective

The acquisition and localization of desired sounds is essential in a broad range of acoustical applications, such as surveillance, security monitoring, heath-care monitoring, video-conferencing systems. The desired sounds that are received by an acoustic sensor are degraded by room reverberation, background noise, and other interferences. This degradation may lead to total unintelligibility of the desired sounds (speech and audio) and decreases the performance of automatic speech recognition systems. Therefore, Acoustic Signal Processing (ASP) techniques that capture desired sounds or their source locations from low-quality signals are of major importance. While state-of-the-art ASP algorithms are able to reduce noise, the development of practical algorithms that can eliminate the degradations caused by reverberation in a noisy environment have not yet emerged. Furthermore, it should be noted that many, if not all, existing ASP techniques fail completely or experience a dramatically reduced performance when noise and reverberation are present. The main objective of this project is to develop advanced ASP algorithms that will allow the capture of desired sounds and their source locations in strongly adverse environments. We anticipate that this objective can be achieved by using distributed acoustic sensors and sensor arrays that measure the sound pressure, as well as the particle velocity. In addition, we propose to exploit statistical room acoustic theory in the development of advanced ASP algorithms.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.

• engineering and technology › electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering › electronic engineering › signal processing
• natural sciences › physical sciences › acoustics
• engineering and technology › electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering › electronic engineering › sensors

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Programme(s)

• FP7-PEOPLE - Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Topic(s)

• FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008 - Marie Curie Action: "Intra-European Fellowships for Career Development"

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)

Coordinator

IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE

• EU contribution: € 182 484,78
• Address: SOUTH KENSINGTON CAMPUS EXHIBITION ROAD ; SW7 2AZ LONDON ; United Kingdom
• Region: London › Inner London — West › Westminster
• Activity type: Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
• Total cost: No data