An improved automatic lipreading system to enhance speech recognition

An improved version of a previously described automatic lipreading system has been developed which uses vector quantization, dynamic time warping, and a new heuristic distance measure to improve acoustic speech recognition.

Abstract

Current acoustic speech recognition technology performs well with very small vocabularies in noise or with large vocabularies in very low noise. Accurate acoustic speech recognition in noise with vocabularies over 100 words has yet to be achieved. Humans frequently lipread the visible facial speech articulations to enhance speech recognition, especially when the acoustic signal is degraded by noise or hearing impairment. Automatic lipreading has been found to improve significantly acoustic speech recognition and could be advantageous in noisy environments such as offices, aircraft and factories.