What demands are placed on emotion-aware speech systems used in interactive Virtual Reality (VR) environments?
Creation of a real-time, low latency pipeline connecting sensing, processing, and acting based on emotional input
In interactive environments like Virtual Reality (VR), emotion-aware speech transitions from a static analysis task into a dynamic conversational requirement for believable character interaction. For a virtual character to respond appropriately to a user's spoken input—for example, recognizing anger—the system must execute two primary functions in sequence: Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) to sense the input emotion, and Emotion-Aware Text-to-Speech (TTS) to formulate an emotionally congruent response. The critical demand here is performance speed. The entire pipeline, encompassing sensing the user's emotion, processing that signal, and acting by generating a responsive TTS output, must operate with extremely low latency. If the reaction is delayed, the interaction breaks immersion, meaning the invention is in creating this seamless, real-time feedback loop.
