IEEE SLT 2021
Alpha-mini Speech Challenge(ASC)

Human-robot speech interaction (HRSI) is an indispensable skill for humanoid robots. Robots produced by UBTECH are equipped with intelligent voice interaction functions. As a global high-tech innovation enterprise integrating artificial intelligence, humanoid robot research and development, platform software development and application, and product sales, UBTECH has always been committed to smooth, efficient and friendly HRSI technology research and development, enabling every robot to listen and speak.

As the first chain of HRSI, keyword spotting (KWS) technology, (a.k.a wake-up word detection ) directly determines the experience of subsequent interactions. Meanwhile, the accuracy of sound source location (SSL) can provide essential cues for subsequent beamforming, speech enhancement and speech recognition algorithms. In home environments, the following interferences pose great challenges to HRSI: 1) various types of noises from TV, radio, other electrical appliances and human talking, 2) echoes from the loudspeaker equipped on the robot, 3) room reverberation and 4) noises from the mechanical movements of the robot (mechanical noise in short). These noise interferences complicate KWS and SSL to a great extent. Thus, robust algorithms are highly in demand.

UBTECH Technology Co., Ltd., Northwestern Polytechnical University, Idiap Research Institute, Peking University and AISHELL Foundation jointly organize the Alpha-mini Speech Challenge (ASC), providing a common benchmark for KWS, SSL and related tasks. Alpha-mini is an excellent robot produced by UBTECH, equipped with intelligent speech interaction module based on a 4-microphone array. As a flagship challenge event of the 2021 IEEE Spoken Language Technology (SLT) Workshop , ASC will provide the participants with labelled audio data recorded from Alpha-mini in real room environments, covering abundant indoor noise, echo and reverberation. It aims to promote research in actual HRSI scenarios and provide a common benchmark for KWS, SSL and related speech tasks.

  @inproceedings{ASC2021,
    title={IEEE SLT 2021 Alpha-mini Speech Challenge: Open Datasets, Tracks, Rules and Baselines},
    author={Fu, Yihui and Yao, Zhuoyuan and He, Weipeng and Wu, Jian and Wang, Xiong and Yang, 
            Zhanheng and Zhang, Shimin and Xie, Lei and Huang, Dongyan and Bu, Hui and Motlicek, Petr and Odobez, Jean-Marc},
    booktitle = {{IEEE SLT 2021}},
    address = {Shenzhen, China},
    year = {2021},
    month = January,
  }