Using GAs to create a waveguide model of the oral vocal tract

Abstract

A Digital Waveguide Mesh is introduced as a method for acoustic modelling. Genetic Algorithms are applied to evolve the structure of a mesh to simulate the human throat and mouth, producing vowel-like sounds. The evolved shapes are compared to actual shapes adopted by the oral vocal tract during speech. The evolutionary methods are "tuned" for implementation on a new hardware device being developed under the POEtic project. Initial results given in this paper are promising. © Springer-Verlag 2004.