AURORA Model of Formant-to-Tongue Inversion for Didactic and Clinical Applications
Patrycja Strycharczuk, Sam Kirkham · Mar 18, 2026 · Citations: 0
How to use this page
Low trustUse this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.
Best use
Background context only
What to verify
Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.
Evidence quality
Low
Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.
Abstract
This paper outlines the conceptual and computational foundations of the AURORA (Acoustic Understanding and Real-time Observation of Resonant Articulations) model. AURORA predicts tongue displacement and shape in vowel sounds based on the first two formant values. It is intended as a didactic aid helping to explain the relationship between formants and the underlying articulation, as well as a foundation for biofeedback applications. The model is informed by ultrasound tongue imaging and acoustic data from 40 native speakers of English. In this paper we discuss the motivation for the model, the modelling objectives as well as the model architecture. We provide a qualitative evaluation of the model, focusing on selected tongue features. We then present two tools developed to make the model more accessible to a wider audience, a Shiny app and a prototype software for real-time tongue biofeedback. Potential users include students of phonetics, linguists in fields adjacent to phonetics, as well as speech and language therapy practitioners and clients.