scholarly journals Voice adaptation by color-encoded frame matching as a multi-objective optimization problem for future games

Author(s):  
Mads Midtlyng ◽  
Yuji Sato ◽  
Hiroshi Hosobe

AbstractVoice adaptation is an interactive speech processing technique that allows the speaker to transmit with a chosen target voice. We propose a novel method that is intended for dynamic scenarios, such as online video games, where the source speaker’s and target speaker’s data are nonaligned. This would yield massive improvements to immersion and experience by fully becoming a character, and address privacy concerns to protect against harassment by disguising the voice. With unaligned data, traditional methods, e.g., probabilistic models become inaccurate, while recent methods such as deep neural networks (DNN) require too substantial preparation work. Common methods require multiple subjects to be trained in parallel, which constraints practicality in productive environments. Our proposal trains a subject nonparallel into a voice profile used against any unknown source speaker. Prosodic data such as pitch, power and temporal structure are encoded into RGBA-colored frames used in a multi-objective optimization problem to adjust interrelated features based on color likeness. Finally, frames are smoothed and adjusted before output. The method was evaluated using Mean Opinion Score, ABX, MUSHRA, Single Ease Questions and performance benchmarks using two voice profiles of varying sizes and lastly discussion regarding game implementation. Results show improved adaptation quality, especially in a larger voice profile, and audience is positive about using such technology in future games.

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 2775
Author(s):  
Tsubasa Takano ◽  
Takumi Nakane ◽  
Takuya Akashi ◽  
Chao Zhang

In this paper, we propose a method to detect Braille blocks from an egocentric viewpoint, which is a key part of many walking support devices for visually impaired people. Our main contribution is to cast this task as a multi-objective optimization problem and exploits both the geometric and the appearance features for detection. Specifically, two objective functions were designed under an evolutionary optimization framework with a line pair modeled as an individual (i.e., solution). Both of the objectives follow the basic characteristics of the Braille blocks, which aim to clarify the boundaries and estimate the likelihood of the Braille block surface. Our proposed method was assessed by an originally collected and annotated dataset under real scenarios. Both quantitative and qualitative experimental results show that the proposed method can detect Braille blocks under various environments. We also provide a comprehensive comparison of the detection performance with respect to different multi-objective optimization algorithms.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Hailin Liu ◽  
Fangqing Gu ◽  
Zixian Lin

Transfer learning methods exploit similarities between different datasets to improve the performance of the target task by transferring knowledge from source tasks to the target task. “What to transfer” is a main research issue in transfer learning. The existing transfer learning method generally needs to acquire the shared parameters by integrating human knowledge. However, in many real applications, an understanding of which parameters can be shared is unknown beforehand. Transfer learning model is essentially a special multi-objective optimization problem. Consequently, this paper proposes a novel auto-sharing parameter technique for transfer learning based on multi-objective optimization and solves the optimization problem by using a multi-swarm particle swarm optimizer. Each task objective is simultaneously optimized by a sub-swarm. The current best particle from the sub-swarm of the target task is used to guide the search of particles of the source tasks and vice versa. The target task and source task are jointly solved by sharing the information of the best particle, which works as an inductive bias. Experiments are carried out to evaluate the proposed algorithm on several synthetic data sets and two real-world data sets of a school data set and a landmine data set, which show that the proposed algorithm is effective.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aakriti Tarun Sharma

The process of converting a behavioral specification of an application to its equivalent system architecture is referred to as High Level-Synthesis (HLS). A crucial stage in embedded systems design involves finding the trade off between resource utilization and performance. An exhaustive search would yield the required results, but would take a huge amount of time to arrive at the solution even for smaller designs. This would result in a high time complexity. We employ the use of Design Space Exploration (DSE) in order to reduce the complexity of the design space and to reach the desired results in less time. In reality, there are multiple constraints defined by the user that need to be satisfied simultaneously. Thus, the nature of the task at hand is referred to as Multi-Objective Optimization. In this thesis, the design process of DSP benchmarks was analyzed based on user defined constraints such as power and execution time. The analyzed outcome was compared with the existing approaches in DSE and an optimal design solution was derived in a shorter time period.


Author(s):  
Weijun Wang ◽  
Stéphane Caro ◽  
Fouad Bennis ◽  
Oscar Brito Augusto

For Multi-Objective Robust Optimization Problem (MOROP), it is important to obtain design solutions that are both optimal and robust. To find these solutions, usually, the designer need to set a threshold of the variation of Performance Functions (PFs) before optimization, or add the effects of uncertainties on the original PFs to generate a new Pareto robust front. In this paper, we divide a MOROP into two Multi-Objective Optimization Problems (MOOPs). One is the original MOOP, another one is that we take the Robustness Functions (RFs), robust counterparts of the original PFs, as optimization objectives. After solving these two MOOPs separately, two sets of solutions come out, namely the Pareto Performance Solutions (PP) and the Pareto Robustness Solutions (PR). Make a further development on these two sets, we can get two types of solutions, namely the Pareto Robustness Solutions among the Pareto Performance Solutions (PR(PP)), and the Pareto Performance Solutions among the Pareto Robustness Solutions (PP(PR)). Further more, the intersection of PR(PP) and PP(PR) can represent the intersection of PR and PP well. Then the designer can choose good solutions by comparing the results of PR(PP) and PP(PR). Thanks to this method, we can find out the optimal and robust solutions without setting the threshold of the variation of PFs nor losing the initial Pareto front. Finally, an illustrative example highlights the contributions of the paper.


2014 ◽  
Vol 494-495 ◽  
pp. 1715-1718
Author(s):  
Gui Li Yuan ◽  
Tong Yu ◽  
Juan Du

The classic multi-objective optimization method of sub goals multiplication and division theory is applied to solve optimal load distribution problem in thermal power plants. A multi-objective optimization model is built which comprehensively reflects the economy, environmental protection and speediness. The proposed model effectively avoids the target normalization and weights determination existing in the process of changing the multi-objective optimization problem into a single objective optimization problem. Since genetic algorithm (GA) has the drawback of falling into local optimum, adaptive immune vaccines algorithm (AIVA) is applied to optimize the constructed model and the results are compared with that optimized by genetic algorithm. Simulation shows this method can complete multi-objective optimal load distribution quickly and efficiently.


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