Projects

13 funded projects, in full detail.

Every project the lab has run since 2008 — investigators, funding agency, duration, and outcome.

Development of Text-to-Speech Synthesis for Indian Languages

2012 – 2017

Small-footprint text-to-speech systems for 13 Indian languages, of which SSN was responsible for Tamil.

Investigators: Dr. T. Nagarajan (PI), Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (Co-PI), Dr. A. Shahina (Co-PI)
Consortium Leader: IIT Madras
Funding Agency: Department of Information Technology (DIT) – Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)
Fund Allocated: ₹77 lakh

Try the Tamil TTS demo

An Assessment and Intelligibility Modification System for Dysarthric Speakers

2010 – 2013

A detection and assessment system analysing problems related to laryngeal, velopharyngeal and articulatory subsystems for dysarthric speakers.

Investigators: Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (PI), Dr. T. Nagarajan (Co-PI)
Funding Agency: All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) – Research Promotion Scheme (RPS)
Fund Allocated: ₹9 lakh

Speech Enabled Interactive Enquiry System in Tamil

2016 – 2017

A speech-enabled interactive enquiry system that lets a farmer interact with a machine through Tamil speech to obtain agricultural information.

Investigators: Dr. T. Nagarajan (PI), Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (Co-PI), Dr. B. Bharathi (Co-PI), Ms. Sasirekha (Co-PI)
Funding Agency: Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA)
Fund Allocated: ₹9.52 lakh

Try the Agri enquiry demo

Speech-Input Speech-Output Communication Aid (SISOCA) for Speakers with Cerebral Palsy

2017 – 2020

A speech-input speech-output communication aid built as a Raspberry Pi-based handheld device for dysarthric speakers.

Investigators: Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (PI), Dr. T. Nagarajan (Co-PI)
Funding Agency: Department of Science and Technology – Technology Interventions for Disabled and Elderly (DST–TIDE)
Fund Allocated: ₹13.72 lakh

HMM-based Text-to-Speech Synthesis System for Malaysian Tamil

2016 – 2017

A small footprint text-to-speech system for Malaysian Tamil.

Investigators: Dr. T. Nagarajan (PI), Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (Co-PI)
Funding Agency: Murasu Systems Sdn Bhd, Malaysia
Fund Allocated: ₹4 lakh

Speech Assistive Aids for Visually Challenged People

2018 – 2020

Four assistive aids combining text-to-speech synthesis and speech recognition to help visually challenged people read and write with ease.

Investigators: Dr. T. Nagarajan (PI), Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (Co-PI)
Funding Agency: Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA)
Fund Allocated: ₹25 lakh

Tamil Pronunciation Error Detection Aid for Children – Prototype

2019 – 2020

A feedback system for children that detects pronunciation errors.

Investigators: Dr. T. Nagarajan (PI)
Funding Agency: Murasu Systems Sdn Bhd, Malaysia
Fund Allocated: ₹0.5 lakh

See Sound Live

2020 – 2023

A scoring system for deaf learners of speech, helping them speak by means of visual stimulus.

Investigators: Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (PI, Lead Consultant)
Funding Agency: 4S Medical Systems
Fund Allocated: ₹2.71 lakh

Assistive Speech Technologies — NLTM BHASHINI

2022 – 2025

Assessment and therapy tools for speech articulatory disorders, ASR systems for dysarthric speakers, adaptive-rate TTS for people with articulation disorders and the visually challenged, and speech-based emotion recognition for disordered speech such as dysarthria.

Investigators: Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi, Dr. T. Nagarajan
Consortium Leader: IIT Madras
Funding Agency: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)
Fund Allocated: ₹85.26 lakh

Prosody Modelling for TTS — NLTM BHASHINI

2022 – 2025

Prosodically rich annotation for ASR output usable for translation and transcreation, improved TTS naturalness, and a voice conversion system.

Investigators: Dr. T. Nagarajan (PI), Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (Co-PI)
Consortium Leader: IIT Madras
Funding Agency: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)
Fund Allocated: ₹98.41 lakh

Shiksha Initiative — Building a Hindi-to-Tamil Translation System

2022 – 2023

Translating the text content of the Shiksha Initiative (in Hindi) into Tamil.

Investigators: Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi, Dr. K. Mrinalini
Funding Agency: HCL Technologies Limited
Fund Allocated: ₹10.28 lakh

Standalone Speech-to-Speech Translator for English, Hindi and Tamil Languages

2023 – 2026 (Sanctioned)

A speech-to-speech conversation system in English, Hindi and Tamil, in the domains of travel, health and agriculture.

Investigators: Dr. T. Nagarajan (PI), Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (Co-PI)
Consortium Leader: IIT Dharwad
Funding Agency: SERB – IMPRINT II C
Fund Allocated: ₹60 lakh

Real-time Multi Dialect Automatic Speech Recognition System for Tamil

2023 – 2024

A real-time automatic speech recognition system for conversational speech across five Tamil dialects.

Investigators: Dr. B. Bharathi (PI), Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi (Co-PI), Dr. T. Nagarajan (Co-PI)
Funding Agency: Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA)
Fund Allocated: ₹13.77 lakh