SPEECH ARTICULATOR MEASUREMENTS CASING LOW-POWER EM-WAVE SENSORS

Very low power electromagnetic (EM) wave sensors are being used to mea sure speech articulator motions as speech is produced. Glottal tissue oscillations, jaw, tongue, soft palate, and other organs have been mea sured. Previously, microwave imaging (e.g., using radar sensors) appea rs not to have been considered for such monitoring. Glottal tissue mov ements detected by radar sensors correlate well with those obtained by established laboratory techniques, and have been used to estimate a v oiced excitation function for speech processing applications. The noni nvasive access, coupled with the small size, low power, and high resol ution of these new sensors, permit promising research and development applications in speech production, communication disorders, speech rec ognition and related topics. (C) 1998 Acoustical Society of America.