Patent ID: 7089183
Filing Date: 2006-08-08
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
1. A method of hierarchical linear regression to develop a set of linear transforms for adaptation of an initial set of Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to a new environment comprising the steps of: providing an initial set of HMM models obtaining adaptation speech data from a new acoustic environment, adapting the initial set of models to the new acoustic environment by a procedure comprising the steps of creating an alignment of the adaptation speech data to the HMM model set, then performing the iterative steps of Estimate-Maximize (EM) estimation to generate a local set of linear transforms, merging the local set of linear transforms with a set of prior global transforms to form a new global set of transforms, adapting the initial set of HMM models using the new global set of transforms, and beginning a new EM estimation iteration step to repeat the procedure.