Text-to-Speech

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Main text-to-speech.jpg

Introduction

Text To Speech,(TTS), converts typed text into sound.
EA integrate third party TTS software to provide this functionality. From 2014 onwards EA robots use Acapela.

EA have also written software interfaces for:

All of the above TTS solutions are licenced, paid for software supplied by third party vendors.

There are some free to use TTS solutions available like Festival these can be integrated by the customer if required but are not supported by EA.


Also see Automated Speech Recognition for the opposite speech-to-text process.

Automatically generated mouth shapes and movements from TTS

Please note that Acapela Text-to-Speech (TTS) not only generates audio files from text, it also generates mouth shapes used by InYaFace on robots with a Projected Face.

Your projected face robot will lipsync with realistic mouth shapes and movements to any Text-to-Speech created with Acapela in Virtual Robot so you don't have to create the mouth movements yourself. You can modify these mouth shapes, or replace with your own in Virtual Robot if desired.

Technical details here - Text-to-speech Auto Generated Mouth Positions

This functionality is currently being developed to work with any Acapela voices installed locally on your robot as well.

Languages

TTS supports many different languages, and speakers, male, female, children, and characters.
There are also controls to vary the speed and tone of voices.

You test many of the Acapela voices on their website


As of Spring 2016 there are 34 Acapela Languages available:

  • Arabic
  • Catalan
  • Chinese Mandarin
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch (Belgium)
  • Dutch (Netherlands)
  • English (Australia)
  • English (India)
  • English (UK)
  • English (US)
  • Finnish
  • French
  • French (Belgium)
  • French (Canada)
  • German
  • Greek
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Spanish (North America)
  • Swedish
  • Swedish (Finland)
  • Turkish

Public User Interface Versus Virtual Robot TTS Voices

EA robots like RoboThespian and SociBot are shipped with a default Acapela English male character Graham voice installed on the public user interface [Compose Screen]. Additional TTS voices in multiple language and gender options can be ordered by customer at any time during or after purchase

Customers using Virtual Robot automatically receive free access to 40+ Acapela TTS voices in a range of languages and genders to use in creating robot content.


TTS Voices versus pre recorded speech