A vision-based microphone switch for speech intent detection

In this paper we present our system for speech intent detection. In traditional desktop speech applications, the user has to explicitly indicate intent-to-speak to the computer by turning the microphone on. This is to alleviate problems associated with an open microphone in an automatic speech recognition system. In this paper, we use cues derived from user pose, proximity and visual speech activity to detect speech intent and enable automatic control of the microphone. We achieve real-time performance using pro-attentive cues to eliminate redundant computation.