Developers of speech recognition technology seem to have taken to heart the adage that the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.
Developers have tried for decades to improve speech-recognition technology. The military funded its early development in the 1970s and continues to drive innovation today. Current research activities focus on enhancing the technology’s accuracy with foreign languages and improving its ability to work in loud environments.
Meanwhile, continuing improvements in commercial speech recognition could help overcome the technology’s reputation as an over-hyped underachiever. PC-based speech-recognition products already enjoy a presence among people for whom keyboard input is difficult or impossible and in specialized areas such as medical transcription. Higher accuracy, coupled with a gentler learning curve, appear to be winning over customers in other areas.
Perhaps the greatest advances could be made using speech recognition software on smart phones and personal digital assistants. People who now struggle with small keypads might be open to using voice input for text-messaging and Web browsing.
“The real need is in mobile phones,” said Bill Meisel, president of TMA Associates, a consulting firm and newsletter publisher that focuses on speech recognition. “That is where people are going to be the most motivated…to use speech.”
Experts say that if speech recognition becomes second nature to millions of cell phone and PDA users, the hands-free habit could spill over into general desktop and laptop PC use.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a longtime backer of speech recognition research, is focused on processing foreign-language speech and text. In 2005 the agency launched the Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) project with a goal of distilling foreign-language radio and TV newscasts into what DARPA describes as actionable information for military commanders and personnel.
DARPA tapped BBN Technologies, IBM and SRI International to develop systems capable of transcribing broadcasts into text and translating it into English text. They began with Arabic and Chinese. The companies deliver the technology in stages as they strive to hit accuracy targets.
“Targets for the ultimate goal are 95 percent translation accuracy for 90 percent of show segments,” said Joseph Olive, DARPA’s GALE program manager.
Another military application of speech recognition involves the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which has a speech recognition system that enables a pilot to control various subsystems through voice commands. That system is based on SRI’s DynaSpeak speech-recognition software.
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