Lip motion pattern recognition for Indonesian syllable pronunciation utilizing Hidden Markov Model method

Abstract

A speech therapeutic tool has been developed to help Indonesian deaf kids learn how to pronounce words correctly. The applied technique utilized lip movement frames captured by a camera and inputted them in to a pattern recognition module which can differentiate between different vowel phonemes pronunciation in Indonesian language. In this paper, we used one dimensional Hidden Markov Model (HMM) method for pattern recognition module. The feature used for the training and test data were composed of six key-points of 20 sequential frames representing certain phonemes. Seventeen Indonesian phonemes were chosen from the words usually used by deaf kid special school teachers for speech therapy. The results showed that the recognition rates varied on different phonemes articulation, ie. 78% for bilabial/palatal phonemes and 63% for palatal only phonemes. The condition of the lips also had effect on the result, where female with red lips has 0.77 correlation coefficient, compare to 0.68 for pale lips and 0.38 for male with mustaches.