:::

【2020 Application Example】 AI Voice Synthesis Module, Bringing Warmth to Machine Narration

In response to current trends, digital learning and mobile educational materials have attracted widespread attention!

With rapid technological advancements, effectively nurturing professionals who can 'adapt to developmental changes' is a critical concern that many businesses continually consider. Over recent years, various enterprises have progressively integrated 'digital learning' into employee training programs to enhance educational outcomes, thus bringing 'digital learning' and 'mobile educational materials' into the limelight.

Outsourced narration is costly and cannot handle large volumes of demand

Differences in the digital educational material production process before and after the implementation of the AI voice synthesis system

▸ Differences in the digital educational material production process before and after the implementation of the AI voice synthesis system

Strategic Breakthrough Corporation of Taiwan has assisted companies in converting many seminars, physical courses, and training events conducted by public sectors into digital materials in the past years. However, during the conversion process, it required inviting teachers, finding and renting filming locations, and post-production of recordings and videos. During recording, issues such as speakers' nervousness, discomfort in front of cameras, or mispronunciations might lead to poor recording quality or constant retakes.

Though there was an option to provide customer-specific educational material narration, the outsourcing costs were high and could not handle the demand efficiently. Therefore, there was a hope to introduce AI speech synthesis technology and develop an 'Intelligent Voice Synthesis Module' to instantly convert text on slides into natural, human-like voice files, thus saving on narration costs.

Realistic Intelligent Voice Synthesis Module, providing a diversified selection of voices

AI Voice Synthesis Module Illustration

▸ AI Voice Synthesis Module Illustration

Strategic Corporation of Taiwan collaborated with the AI technology team, Magic Cube Digital Ltd., using Tacotron2 combined with WaveNet and Tacotron features. Characters are embedded into Mel-scale spectrogram plots, then a modified WaveNet model acting as the vocoder synthesizes waveform in the time domain from these spectrograms, finally developing an MOS (Mean Opinion Score) for voice quality evaluation that approximates human-like intelligent voice synthesis modules.

This AI Intelligent Voice Synthesis Module, after being tested by testers using the MOS voice quality evaluation standard, received a score of 4.3, meeting the initial project target score of 4.21 and surpassing WaveNet's score of 4.08, thereby demonstrating exceptional effectiveness!

AI Intelligent Voice Synthesis Module, reducing costs and increasing profits, will effectively enhance Taiwan's digital learning industry environment!

Costs have been significantly reduced after the implementation of the AI voice system, and profits have increased relatively

▸ Costs have been significantly reduced after the implementation of the AI voice system, and profits have increased relatively

This AI Intelligent Voice Synthesis Module not only reduces the cost of producing digital educational materials but also solves the difficulties faced by Taiwan's industry, government, and academia in spreading digital educational materials. It can effectively enhance the efficiency of customers in producing digital teaching materials, significantly reduce labor shortages, and cost structural risks, and improve profitability.

Strategic Corporation of Taiwan will also continue to develop the 'Intelligent Transcription Module' and introduce Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to replace the current manual processes, such as captioning, dubbing, and file conversion in the production of digital educational materials, assisting in the transformation and enhancement of the domestic digital learning industry.

「Translated content is generated by ChatGPT and is for reference only. Translation date:2024-05-19」

Recommend Cases

【導入案例】巨量遙測空間數據AI分析雲端服務平台 使衛星遙測影像順利落地應用
AI Analysis Cloud Service Platform for Remote Sensing Big Data Enables the Smooth Application of Satellite Remote Sensing Images

Although satellite remote sensing images can make all surface objects visible, it still requires a lot of time and manpower to be truly applied to the industry In order to effectively solve the problems that customers face in digesting huge amounts of image data and eliminate technical obstacles for cross-domain users to process satellite remote sensing images, ThinkTron has developed an "AI Analysis Cloud Service Platform for Remote Sensing Big Data" as a new beginning for cross-domain AI applications for spatial information In recent years, in response to the impact of industrial globalization, Taiwan's agriculture has continued to transition towards technology-based and higher quality, improving the yield and quality of crops by solving problems, such as microclimate impacts and pest and disease control The demand of agriculture on images has expanded endlessly to accurately grasp the growing environment of crops In the early years when UAVs unmanned aerial vehicles were not yet popular, manual field surveys were the most basic but most labor-intensive work With the emergence of UAV drones, aerial photography operations might not be difficult, but the range that can be photographed is limited Furthermore, surveying expertise is required to accurately capture spatial information At this time, the use of satellite remote sensing data may break away from the past imagination of using image data Taiwan Space Agency TASA ODC data warehouse services In the past ten years, with the breakthrough of modern satellite remote sensing application technology, Digital Earth has become a new trend in global data collection Countries have developed data cube image storage technology, and the development of smart agriculture has become one of the largest image users Determining planting distribution is the first step in understanding crop yields Free satellite remote sensing images, powerful data warehousing support, and the team's robust image recognition technology are important supports for accelerating agricultural transformation Using satellite remote sensing image data can accelerate the development of smart agriculture However, in the past, it was difficult to extract large-area crop distribution through satellite remote sensing images, not to mention the cost If you wanted to use free information, you had to visit all websites of international space agencies, look through the wide variety of satellite specifications, and carefully evaluate the sensor specifications, image resolution, and revisit cycle After finding suitable images, you had to look at them one by one to filter the ones you need Next is downloading dozens of images that are often several hundreds of Megabytes MB each, which might exceed the capacity of your computer Also, after overcoming image access and preparing data, you must then start to confirm the downloaded image products and which bands you want, because the image you see is not just an image file jpg or png, but rather complex multi-spectral information, attribute fields and coordinate information It takes a lot of effort just to confirm the correct information Facing GIS software packages with complex functions is the start of another trouble The complex image pre-processing process and the inflexible machine learning package greatly reduce the efficiency of analyzing data After finally getting the results of crop identification, you might find that the best time for using map information may have already passed The above-mentioned complex and time-consuming satellite image processing problems are precisely the pain points of the market ThinkTron expanded from traditional machine learning to modern deep learning applications, and developed an "AI Analysis Cloud Service Platform for Remote Sensing Big Data" under the GeoAI framework, breaking through the constraints of details in the spatial information for customers Differences between the process before and after introducing the AI analysis cloud service platform ThinkTron said that Taiwan's ODC Open Data Cube system has been completed and began providing services after years of efforts from the Taiwan Space Agency TASA, formally becoming aligned with international trends The powerful warehousing technology allows users to easily capture and use image data of a specific time and spatial range according to their needs The warehouse stores multiple satellite image resources from international space agencies, including the ESA's Sentinel-1 one image every 6 days, Sentinel-2 one image every 6 days, USGS's Landsat-7 one image every 16 days, Landsat-8 one image every 16 days, and the domestic Formosat-2 one image every day and Formosat-5 one image every 2 days ThinkTron develops satellite image recognition tools based on Python Breaking free from the limitations of GIS Geographic Information System software packages, ThinkTron integrated GDAL Geospatial Data Abstraction Library based on Python, and considered computing efficiency and parallel processing when developing all tools required for satellite image processing and image recognition modeling, including coordinate system and data format conversion, grid and vector data interaction, and data intra-difference and normalization All of the tools are designed with AI applications in mind, and some commonly used tools are packaged into an open source package under the name TronGisPy to benefit the technical community ThinkTron utilized the team's understanding of satellite remote sensing images and the collected tagged data crop distribution maps to preset the image recognition modeling process, the required training data specifications, and dataset definitions This is imported into the machine learning LightGBM or deep learning CNN framework that was completed in advance, and the entire training process to be performed in the Web GIS interface, providing users with partial flexibility to freely filter images, confirm spatial and temporal ranges, select models, and adjust hyperparameters In addition to the operation of training models, it also provides historical models to output identification results, and finally displays the identification results of crop distribution on the Web GIS map In fact, agriculture is not the only industry that needs satellite remote sensing applications AI applications of spatial information have also appeared in various fields as companies in different industries aim to enhance their global competitiveness For example, surveying and mapping companies that have a large amount of map data can use the AI analysis cloud service platform to store map data while also accelerating the efficiency of digital mapping Under the severe global climate change and the risk of strong earthquakes, there is a wide variety industrial insurance, agricultural insurance, financial insurance, or disaster insurance are all inseparable from spatial information The use of remote sensing image recognition to understand insurance targets has long been an international trend AI Analysis Cloud Service Architecture for Remote Sensing Big Data

【導入案例】赫銳特科技VCSEL封裝元件瑕疵導入AOI檢測 提升產能效率20
HRT Technology Improves Production Efficiency by 20% Through AOI Detection of Defects in VCSEL Packaging

In 2017, the launch of the iPhone X made 3D sensor technology used in Face ID highly popular, which drove the development of VCSEL, a core component in the 3D sensor module In the detection of defects in incoming packaged VCSEL, the use of AI inference models can solve the industry's issue with low yield and improve reliability to 95 VCSEL technology currently can be used in many applications and various end consumer markets, including robots, mobile devices, surveillance, drones, and ARVR VCSELs are a good solution in applications that require high-speed modulation capabilities, such as cameras and biometrics VCSEL technology has a wide range ofnbsp applications, including in drones Pictured Zoyi Technology's Agricultural Drone VCSEL technology has a wide range of applications, AI technology assists in defect detection HRT Technology stated that the packaged VCSEL market is also facing strong price competition from competitors, and needs to further reduce costs and enhance product competitiveness One of the key problems is the replacement of glass lens with epoxy resin lens The production of traditional glass lenses has high yield, but the cost is higher than that of epoxy resin lenses Due to the cutting process of epoxy resin, the side wall of cutting lines can easily have rough edges, causing it to be oversized The release of stress caused by heat during the mounting process will directly cause the optical lens to break HRT Technology pointed out that the incoming inspection of VCSEL epoxy resin lenses is very important Under the constraints of packaging space, the space for fitting the package and optical lens is limited Moreover, the optical lenses will be confined to a metal frame If the dimensional tolerances are properly controlled, stress release due to heat during mounting can easily cause the optical lens to break, resulting in a yield loss of up to 10 in the VCSEL package reliability verification, resulting in an increase in production costs In order to solve the problems above, HRT Technology hopes to use AI to monitor the size and appearance defects of epoxy resin components in the VCSEL epoxy resin lens incoming stage, verifying whether their dimensions meet specifications, whether the cutting edges are smooth, and whether there are any defects in their appearance Since traditional incoming material inspection requires a rough visual inspection by humans to distinguish the quality The problem of image collection needs to be solved first to successfully collect image data Therefore, HRT Technology first developed an Automated Optical Inspection AOI device, which includes X, Y, Z three-axis motion, high-resolution cameras, and related control software to automatically record images After collecting the image data, opencv aligns the test image and a normal image to determine differences between the two images, and then pixel mapping is used to compare the pixel area to complete initial screening Manual labeling is carried out according to the image classification above, including samples that are normal, have defects in appearance, or have different shape characteristics, and then algorithm training and verification is carried out Residual neural network ResNet or other related algorithms are used for deep learning to identify the quality of lenses Implementation of AOI inspection improves production efficiency by 20 and above Comparing the differences before and after the implementation of AI image inspection, the incoming VCSEL lens inspection before implementation only involved manual inspection of the appearance The lens is packaged on the VCSEL package that has completed die bonding After passing the general light up test, the final reliability test high temperature reflow is performed Failed samples go into the rework process However, after the implementation of AOI inspection, it can screen defective lenses sooner and reduce the cost of subsequent materials input, it can also reduce the need for rework due to failure, improving yield to 95 and above in the reliability verification This is expected to help companies reduce production costs by 10 and increase production efficiency by 20 and above The difference before and after implementing AI image detection HRT Technology pointed out that this technology is an AI application developed based on tiny images It uses deep learning algorithms to identify defects in the images The trained network automatically classifies image data to predetermined categories Defect categories can be determined through reference images, so cumbersome programming is not required In the industrial machine vision environment, deep learning is mainly used for classification tasks in applications, such as inspection of industrial products or identification of parts In the future, with the development of IoT wearable devices and the trend of energy saving, the size of optoelectronic components will continue to shrink This technology can be applied to the detection of defects in the appearance of other tiny optoelectronic components in the future

【導入案例】AI嘛會煮咖啡 無人烘豆機靠AI 精準設點與培養忠實客群
AI Can Make Coffee! Autonomous Coffee Roasters Relying on AI for Precise Location Setting and Cultivating Loyal Customers

Have you had your morning coffee yet Over the past decade, Taiwan has gradually formed a coffee drinking culture With the advancement of AI technology, autonomous coffee roasters can now rely on AI for precise location setting while also cultivating a loyal customer base Let's see how this is done According to the International Coffee Organization ICO, Taiwanese consume approximately 285 billion cups of coffee annually, with the coffee market in Taiwan estimated at 80 billion TWD, growing about 20 each year In recent years, the 'drinking coffee' culture in Taiwan has become synonymous with popularity, with coffee being the most frequently chosen daily beverage by 65 of the population Coffee enthusiasts, particularly the more avid ones, are willing to pay more for coffee beans that suit their tastes An increasing number of unmanned drink kiosks have also begun to appear in the Taiwanese beverage market Unmanned coffee beverage shops face difficulties in expanding quickly, primarily due to two major issues one is the appropriateness of customer flow and machine placement locations which still rely on manual analysis the second is penetrating the market of mid to high-end coffee lovers accurately AI resolves two major challenges for autonomous coffee roasters suitable placement and cultivating a loyal customer base To tackle these issues and help autonomous coffee roasters quickly break into the market, Raysharp Electronics intends to implement AI for people flow counting analysis and unfamiliar face recognition These technologies aim to calculate the crowd size at potential roaster locations and classify consumers by gender and age for more precise market analysis They also provide multiple choices for the roasting of raw coffee beans, offering a more customized service tailored to the needs and tastes of professional coffee aficionados with a pack of 'high-quality roasted beans' Since 2018, the rise of unmanned stores has been mainly due to owners wanting to reduce persistently rising rent and personnel costs However, the initial assessment of store locations still requires hourly labor expenses for manual estimation of customer flow, leading to possible miscalculations of both on-site consumers and passerby traffic These inaccuracies may prevent precise real-time analysis of customer flow, or even misguided estimations of operational efficacy after a trial run, thus missing the optimal timing for loss-preventing location retraction Raysharp Electronics introduces autonomous coffee roasters equipped with AI-based people counting analysis and facial recognition Raysharp Electronics combines AI people counting analysis and facial recognition with the coffee trend known as 'black gold', addressing the preferences of numerous coffee connoisseurs in Taiwan who enjoy personally selecting coffee beans at bulk stores and frequenting high-quality grinding cafes or chain coffee shops A new concept for the first autonomous coffee roaster offering choices based on the origin, variety, and roasting methods of coffee beans has emerged AI coffee roasters enhance customer loyalty and materials management efficiency by 20 For the advanced development of autonomous coffee roasters, Raysharp Electronics engineers have equipped the AI NVIDIA development platform on the basis of TCNNFacenet Through AI, tens of thousands of images related to gender and age are used for sample training, allowing even first-time coffee roasting customers to be easily classified using unfamiliar face recognition This gains consumer trust, enhances willingness to use, and allows for recording purchase information and future product recommendations, leading to consumer purchase behavior analysis This information helps owners tailor future material preparation based on consumer preferences for different coffee beans, reducing raw material transportation and storage issues, and improving material management efficiency by 20 Moreover, by placing these autonomous coffee roasters in high-traffic areas, owners can use cameras to capture the crowd and assess whether the machine location has an adequate customer base, quickly analyzing whether to reposition the machines, and more easily targeting the best locations for middle and high-end coffee lovers The unmanned coffee roaster features a professional roasting mode interface, providing options based on the origin and variety of coffee beans, their roasting methods light, medium, deep, and related temperature, wind speed, and timing settings If improvement needs arise during the process, engineers can adjust firmware parameters and also assist in integration with the owner's ordering system Staff members briefly describe the operation of the autonomous coffee roaster 'Black Gold' penetrates deeper into coffee shops, science parks, and commercial buildings through AI This autonomous coffee roaster targets coffee connoisseurs and can be placed in middle to high-end coffee shops to roast more customized coffee beans than those available in bulk stores Upon completing a batch of coffee beans, it immediately provides them to professional technicians within the coffee shops for grinding and manual brewing The remaining roasted beans can also be taken home for brewing and enjoyment It also adds value to coffee shops by better understanding consumer preferences for coffee beans and launching more customer-attracting drink promotions and appropriate inventory management In addition to coffee shops, the autonomous coffee roaster can also utilize AI-based people counting analysis to precisely set up near scientific parks and commercial buildings, offering high-quality coffee beans for office brewing to internal employees with high coffee consumption needs Furthermore, implementing a physical membership system can initiate coffee bean purchase promotions or periodic payment incentives, thus attracting new clients and cultivating existing customer loyalty and retention The operation interface of the smart autonomous coffee roaster「Translated content is generated by ChatGPT and is for reference only Translation date:2024-05-19」