Patricia Scanlon

Patricia Scanlon is an Irish entrepreneur. She founded SoapBox Labs in 2013, a company that applies artificial intelligence to develop voice and speech recognition applications that are specifically tuned to children's voices. It builds language learning appliances for education like text reading and speech therapy, and modules for toys, gaming, voice control, augmented reality, virtual reality, robotics, and the Internet of things. As of 2015, she is CEO of SoapBox Labs, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.[1] The startup raised $3.6 million.

Patricia Scanlon at Inspirefest, 2017, Dublin

Education

Scanlon holds a PhD in digital signal processing and electronic engineering. She executed research for Columbia university, IBM, University College Dublin, and Nokia Bell Lab in Dublin.[2][3]

SoapBox Labs Voice Technology for Kids

The off-the-shelf voice technology found in devices like Amazon Echo or Google Home are built primarily for adults, using adult voice data. Kids have higher pitched voices and unpredictable speech patterns. Unlike adults, kids also won't adapt their speech to ensure they are understood by voice-controlled user interfaces and smart assistants. Voice technology based on adult voice data models performs poorly when used by kids, and the younger the kid, the poorer the performance.

“The voice technology used in mobile phones or other devices isn’t nearly sophisticated enough to be used with children".

"While people are probably familiar with speech recognition for adults, in voice assistants or in smart speakers, our technology has been built specifically for children, and that’s modelling their voices and speech behaviors using state of the art AI technology”

SoapBox Labs uses deep neural network-based speech recognition technology to analyze children's speech in real-world noisy environments

SoapBox Labs has created its own unique children’s speech dataset (consisting of thousands of hours of children’s speech data), and combined this with the team’s understanding of children’s voice and behaviors. The resulting platform is said to leverage deep learning (AI) techniques to power the startup’s proprietary models and scoring algorithms, and ultimately provide far better speech technology targeted at children

Awards

Soapbox Labs was awarded a 1,5 million euro grant by EU SME in 2017.[4]

In October 2018, Scanlon was listed by Forbes as one of the top 50 Women in Tech in Europe and one of the top 50 Women in Tech worldwide[2]

Public Speaking

Scanlon has spoken at conferences such as Inspirefest.[5]

References
  1. "Company Overview of SoapBox Labs Ltd". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
  2. "Patricia Scanlon". Forbes. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  3. "SoapBox Labs" (PDF). Trinity Today autumn 2018. p. 36. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
  4. Gorey, Colm (15 January 2018). "Soapbox Labs secures €2.1m to fund 'Siri for kids'". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  5. Kennedy, John (3 October 2017). "Patricia Scanlon: 'We have built a dataset of 25,000 children's voices'". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 17 January 2019.


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