• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.1777-1778
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• 2007

In this paper, We design and implement a humanoid robot, With Educational purpose, which can collaborate and communicate with human. We present an affective human-robot communication system for a humanoid robot, D2, which we designed to communicate with a human through dialogue. D2 communicates with humans by understanding and expressing emotion using facial expressions, voice, gestures and posture. Interaction between a human and a robot is made possible through our affective communication framework. The framework enables a robot to catch the emotional status of the user and to respond appropriately. As a result, the robot can engage in a natural dialogue with a human. According to the aim to be interacted with a human for voice, gestures and posture, the developed Educational humanoid robot consists of upper body, two arms, wheeled mobile platform and control hardware including vision and speech capability and various control boards such as motion control boards, signal processing board proceeding several types of sensors. Using the Educational humanoid robot D2, we have presented the successful demonstrations which consist of manipulation task with two arms, tracking objects using the vision system, and communication with human by the emotional interface, the synthesized speeches, and the recognition of speech commands.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.133-137
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• 2006

Objectives : The purpose of this paper is to know the efficacy of voice therapy for vocal fold nodules in children. Materials and Methods : Sixty two patients with vocal nodules(46 boys and 16 girls) were retrospectively reviewed. Age ranged from 4 to 15 years with mean age of 8 years. Questionnaire survey was carried out with voice handicap index, at pretherapy and post-therapy(3 months and 5 years after voice therapy). Results : Sixty two percent of the patients showed improvement by voice therapy. Twenty five patients continued education at home after voice therapy, but only eight childrens were included this group in pre-school aged children. Voice handicap index was improved in 3 months and 5 years after voice therapy. In contrast, pre-school children group showed slight aggravation in 5 years, especially in emotional subdomain. Conclusion : Voice therapy is effective primary treatment in children with vocal fold nodules. Different result between preschool aged children and school aged group shows needs for age specific approach of voice therapy.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.102.3-102
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• 2002

$\textbullet$ Human and computer interface(HCI) $\textbullet$ Voice recognition $\textbullet$ Image recognition $\textbullet$ Neural network $\textbullet$ Hopfield net

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2009.01a
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• pp.773-777
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• 2009

In recent years, the field of synthesizing voice has been developed rapidly, and the technologies such as reading aloud an email or sound guidance of a car navigation system are used in various scenes of our life. The sound quality is monotonous like reading news. It is preferable for a text such as a novel to be read by the voice that expresses emotions wealthily. Therefore, we have been trying to develop a system reading aloud novels automatically that are expressed clear emotions comparatively such as juvenile literature. At first it is necessary to identify emotions expressed in a sentence in texts in order to make a computer read texts with an emotionally expressive voice. A method on the basis of the meaning interpretation that utilized artificial intelligence technology for a method to specify emotions of texts is thought, but it is very difficult with the current technology. Therefore, we propose a method to determine only emotion every sentence in a novel by a simpler way. This method determines the emotion of a sentence according to an emotion that words such as a verb in a Japanese verb sentence, and an adjective and an adverb in a adjective sentence, have. The emotional characteristics that these words have are prepared beforehand as a emotional words dictionary by us. The emotions used here are seven types: "joy," "sorrow," "anger," "surprise," "terror," "aversion" or "neutral."

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.89-95
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• 2016

The purpose of this work is to analyze and synthesize the pseudo-periodicity of voice using a source model. A speech signal has periodic characteristics; however, it is not completely periodic. While periodicity contributes significantly to the production of prosody, emotional status, etc., pseudo-periodicity contributes to the distinctions between normal and abnormal status, the naturalness of normal speech, etc. Measurement of pseudo-periodicity is typically performed through parameters such as jitter and shimmer. For studying the pseudo-periodic nature of voice in a controlled environment, through collected natural voice, we can only observe the distributions of the parameters, which are limited by the size of collected data. If we can generate voice samples in a controlled manner, experiments that are more diverse can be conducted. In this study, the probability distributions of vowel pitch variation are obtained from the speech signal. Based on the probability distribution of vocal folds, pulses with a designated jitter value are synthesized. Then, the target and re-analyzed jitter values are compared to check the validity of the method. It was found that the jitter synthesis method is useful for normal voice synthesis.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.491-502
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• 2022

Voice technology allows consumers to make purchases through smart devices, and the interest in voice-driven conversational commerce has significantly expanded. In this study, we explored the continuance use intention of voice commerce, and the adoption of a value-attitude-behavior model. An online survey was conducted on 360 individuals who used an artificial intelligence assistant device in a voice commerce environment. We used Amos 23.0 and SPSS 25.0 for descriptive, confirmatory, and structural equation modeling analyses. These results indicated that functional value was the highest influencing variable on satisfaction of voice commerce, while social, emotional, and epistemic values significantly influenced it as well. Additionally, satisfaction of voice commerce significantly influenced the continuance use intention of voice commerce. These findings could help us understand the characteristics of voice commerce users and the diversity value in voice commerce environment.

• Design Convergence Study
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.17-28
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• 2018

The manipulation of the device by hand while driving is a major factor to increase the risk of accidents, and the design of in-vehicle voice conversational interface that can compensate for this is being actively researched. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the use of the barge-in function of in-vehicle voice interface on user experience. Participants were asked to carry out two tasks, one for navigation and one for music play. We conducted a survey to measure the functional user 's experience after each participant' s tasks, and measured usefulness, usability, satisfaction, and emotion as user experience factors. As a result, Barge-in has been rated as the better choice for most experience factors. There was a significant effect on usability dimension in navigation task and significant effects on usability dimension and emotional dimension in music play task. So it was found that barge-in function had a positive effect on actual user's usability and emotional dimension.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.771-774
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• 2013

This study investigates the relationship between voice quality measurements and emotional states, in addition to conventional prosodic and cepstral features. Open quotient, harmonics-to-noise ratio, spectral tilt, spectral sharpness, and band energy were analyzed as voice quality features, and prosodic features related to fundamental frequency and energy are also examined. ANOVA tests and Sequential Forward Selection are used to evaluate significance and verify performance. Classification experiments show that using the proposed features increases overall accuracy, and in particular, errors between happy and angry decrease. Results also show that adding voice quality features to conventional cepstral features leads to increase in performance.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.713-725
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• 2022

Mostly, artificial intelligence does not show any definite change in emotions. For this reason, it is hard to demonstrate empathy in communication with humans. If frequency modification is applied to neutral emotions, or if a different emotional frequency is added to them, it is possible to develop artificial intelligence with emotions. This study proposes the emotion conversion using the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) based voice frequency synthesis. The proposed method extracts a frequency from speech data of twenty-four actors and actresses. In other words, it extracts voice features of their different emotions, preserves linguistic features, and converts emotions only. After that, it generates a frequency in variational auto-encoding Wasserstein generative adversarial network (VAW-GAN) in order to make prosody and preserve linguistic information. That makes it possible to learn speech features in parallel. Finally, it corrects a frequency by employing Amplitude Scaling. With the use of the spectral conversion of logarithmic scale, it is converted into a frequency in consideration of human hearing features. Accordingly, the proposed technique provides the emotion conversion of speeches in order to express emotions in line with artificially generated voices or speeches.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.17-22
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• 2017

Background and Objectives: Voice change after thyroidectomy may develop without injury of recurrent laryngeal nerve. Psychogenic or emotional factors related to voice change after thyroidectomy has been rarely studied. In this study, we sought to analyze the impact of anxiety on early state of post-thyroidectomy voice change. Materials and Methods: We made a retrospective chart review of 36 patients who underwent thyroidectomy for papillary thyroid carcinoma and voice exam before surgery, 2 weeks after and 1 month after surgery. All patients included in the study answered a questionnaire for State-Trait Anxiety Inventory ; STAI-KYZ (form Korean YZ). Clinico-pathologic factors and parameters of voice analysis were reviewed to analyze correlation to the anxiety index. Results: No differences were identified between clinicopathologic factors and preoperative parameters of voice analysis between patients with higher and lower level of anxiety. Noise to harmonic ratio (NHR) was higher in those patients with higher level of anxiety, 2 weeks after surgery (p=0.043). However, none of the parameters showed any difference 1 month later. Conclusion: With limited number of patients and short period of follow up, significant impact of preoperative anxiety on postoperative voice change after thyroidectomy could not be identified in this preliminary study.