Welcome! Here at Lee Laboratory of Nagoya Institute of Technology, we focus on human-to-human and human-to-machine communication through speech and language, and are conducting research on speech recognition, spoken dialogue systems, natural language processing, speech-based interaction, and avatar communication. Our goal is to advance technologies related to spoken language processing and to realize highly sophisticated, voice- and language-driven man–machine interfaces that are truly natural and user-friendly for everyone.

Our research topic involves:

  • Speech recognition and synthesis
  • Spoken dialogue system
  • Natural language processing
  • CG based humanoid agent interaction
  • Avatar communication

Lee Lab is running in collaboration with Sako laboratory. We also have a cooperative relationship with Tokuda, Nankaku and Hashimoto Laboratory.


About the PI

Professor

LEE Akinobu

Professor

LEE Akinobu was born in Kyoto, Japan, on December 19, 1972. He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in information science, and the Ph.D. degree in informatics from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1996, 1998 and 2000, respectively. He worked on Nara Institute of Science and Technology as an assistance professor from 2000-2005. Currently he is a professor of Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan. His research interests include speech recognition, spoken language understanding, and spoken dialogue system. He is a member of IEEE, ISCA, JSAI, IPSJ and the Acoustical Society of Japan.

He is also a researcher who loves coding and has been involved in open-source activities for over 25 years. Below is a list of open-source software and CG avatars for which he serves as the lead developer:

  • ASR engine Julius (from 1996)
  • CG Agent Interaction Toolkit MMDAgent (2011~)
  • Extended version for CG Avatar interaction: MMDAgent-EX MMDAgent-EX (2020~)
  • High-quality Open CG Avatars: Gene and Uka (2023~)

News and Posts


At the 153rd (Spring 2025) Research Presentation of the Acoustical Society of Japan, Keigo Ichikawa (M2), Momone Suzuki (B4), and Professor Sei Ueno gave presentations

At the 153rd (Spring 2025) Research Presentation of the Acoustical Society of Japan, held from March 17 to March 19, Keigo Ichikawa (M2), Momone Suzuki (B4), and Professor Sei Ueno gave presentations on the following topics. 「話者遷移確率に基づく話者ダイアライゼーションのためのデータ生成」 Keigo Ichikawa,Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee 「音響情報を考慮した大規模言語モデルによる音声認識の誤り訂正」 Momone Suzuki,Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee 「拡散モデルを用いた音声合成による音声認識のデータ拡張」 Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee

At the HAI Symposium 2025, M2 students Akari Kawamata and Yuki Fujioka, along with B4 students Soma Suzuki, Takumi Yoshida, and Koki Yamada, gave presentations.

At the HAI Symposium 2025, held from February 28 to March 1, M2 students Akari Kawamata and Yuki Fujioka, as well as B4 students Soma Suzuki, Takumi Yoshida, and Koki Yamada, presented on the following topics. 「身体性を持つCG対話エージェントにおけるカートゥーン調表現の方法論および比較評価」 Akari Kawamata, Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee(Nagoya Institute of Technology) 「CGアバター遠隔対話のための音声からのモーション生成およびCG特有性の分析」 Yuki Fujioka, Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee 「アバター会話支援のための音声からのリアルタイム会話モーション生成の検討」 Soma Suzuki, Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee 「医療面接教育のための仮想模擬患者を用いた没入型音声対話システム」 Takumi Yoshida, Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee 「CGエージェントを用いた対話システムにおける疑似ソーシャルタッチの効果」 Koki Yamada, Sei Ueno,Akinobu Lee

VRM version of our CG Avatar is now on VRoid Hub

We’ve started uploading VRM version of our CG avatars on VRoid Hub. Lab’s page on VRoid Hub “Gene” and “Uka” models are set to public, so you can use them with vroid-enabled tools. Models are provided with CC-BY 4.0 license, and “Gene” has additional restriction for commercial use. Please consult CG avatars page for details.

Keigo Ichikawa, M2 student, gave a presentation at APSIPA ASC 2024

Keigo Ichikawa (M2) made a presentation at the Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC 2024) held on December 3rd to 6th. “Data generation for speaker diarization by speaker transition information” Keigo Ichikawa, Sei Ueno, and Akinobu Lee

New CG avatar: Nirva

A New CG-CA “Nirva” has been released, designed by an illustrator Mai Yoneyama. CG-CA Nirva The CG-CA page has also been updated to have system information.

New members joined on 2024

Following members has been joined to Lee and Sako lab on this April. 池田 康希 / IKEDA Kouki (M1) 黄 永展 / HUANG Yongzhan (M1) 阪上 聡吾 / SAKAUE Sogo 清水 誠広 / SHIMIZU Masahiro 鈴木 颯真 / SUZUKI Soma 鈴木 萌々音 / SUZUKI Momone 仲田 樹 / NAKADA Itsuki 星野 琴未 / HOSHINO Kotomi 箕成 侑音 / MINARI Yukito 山田 航暉 / YAMADA Koki 𠮷田 拓実 / YOSHIDA Takumi

We have released MMDAgent-EX

We have released MMDAgent-EX, our open-source platform for CG avatar based spoken dialogue system, multimodal dialogue and avatar communication. Links: Press release (by NITech, in Japanese) Official site GitHub