Upcoming SPEAR Challenge: 2023 SPeech Enhancement for Augmented Reality (SPEAR) challenge

SPeech Enhancement for Augmented Reality - SPEAR Challenge

Verbal communication in noisy environments can be hard. Speech enhancement using head-worn microphone arrays, such as hearing aids or augmented reality devices offers the opportunity to make it easier. However, the highly dynamic nature of the listening situation presents some challenges. To this end, the SPeech Enhancement for Augmented Reality (SPEAR) challenge, endorsed by the IEEE Challenges and Data Collection initiative, has been organised in order to further ignite the interest in this important problem and to obtain a better sense of the remaining technological gaps.

Submissions are now closed and we've been busy calculating objective metrics and running a large listening test - more than 12,000 paired comparisons altogether. We now invite you to join us for the SPEAR Challenge Workshop. This will take place on Thursday 30th of March at 3 pm BST. It is entirely online, so everyone is welcome to attend, wherever you are in the world.

Attendance is free, however, you must register for the workshop.

In addition to presenting the results, the workshop will include an overview of the challenge, system descriptions from selected participants and a presentation from Jacob Donley, Research Scientist at Meta, on "Augmented Audio at Meta and the Future of Human Communication: Technology, Challenges, and Opportunities". The abstract can be found below.

More details on the program can be found on the workshop page of the SPEAR Challenge website.

The SPeech Enhancement for Augmented Reality challenge (SPEAR) is an IEEE SPS challenge run in partnership with Reality Labs Research (Meta), which seeks to stimulate new research in the context of head-worn microphone arrays.