Using entropy as a stream reliability estimate for audio-visual speech recognition

We present a method for dynamically integrating audiovisual information for speech recognition, based on the estimated reliability of the audio and visual streams. Our method uses an information theoretic measure, the entropy derived from the state probability distribution for each stream, as an estimate of reliability. The two modalities, audio and video, are weighted at each time instant according to their reliability. In this way, the weights vary dynamically and are able to adapt to any type of noise in each modality, and more importantly, to unexpected variations in the level of noise.