Automated lip-sync: direct translation of speech-sound to mouth-shape

The goal of automatic lip-sync (ALS) is to translate speech sounds into mouth shapes. Although this seems related to speech recognition (SR), the direct map from sound to shape avoids many language problems associated with SR and provides a unique domain for error correction. Among other things, ALS animation may be used for animating cartoons realistically and as an aid to the hearing disabled. Currently, a program named Owie performs speaker dependent ALS for vowels.<>