Wireless Speech Recognition ..

Robotic tongues improving speech recognition..

2008-07-30T14:28:00.000-07:00

The article we found today, can be read here.

But, the video below kind of "tells the story"!

Pretty cool... Eh?

Now there is voice dial for the iPhone!

2008-07-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

A company named "Makayama" has released a voice dial for the iPhone, with interesting features..

Record voice samples for any address book contact - speak to dial it's number.

It's multilingual, and semi-trainable.

Here's the YouTube video:

It's received rather glowing reviews from Engadget & Gizmodo, who can both be tough to impress.

The manufacturer's article can be read here.

Google + speech-recognition indexing of videos!

2008-07-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

Google is now utilizing speech recognition indexing of the spoken audio in videos! Users you can search for spoken text in a video, but for now, only in selected videos only (Political Videos).

Check out the new feature by adding the Google Election Video Search Gadget to your iGoogle page, or view the gadget on their as a standalone page. The gadget works by adding little yellow markers to the timeline letting you know where the word occurs.

Google isn't the first site to combine speech recognition with video search. Blinkx and EveryZing offer the services; But now that the 800 pound gorilla has entered the online video spoken audio search world - look for this market to evolve quickly, and our bet is on Google for leading the pack, of course.

A how-to/helpful "Space" you really should visit..

2008-06-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

We won't waste any ink on the Windows Live Space referenced here;
It has to be visited to be understood.
But be assured it's not a complicated, ugly/busy site that's cryptic in its content.

If you have any inclination, now or soon, to begin using the ultra-powerful
Macros for Windows Speech Recognition you must visit this website... !!

Windows Speech Recognition Macros

ENJOY!

A speech-driven PIM on steroids, from Speereo!

2008-06-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

Speereo's PR Manager, who left a kind comment to our last posting about their super-cool Voice Translator has alerted us to another product, titled "Sapie", which has received rather glowing reviews by 3rd parties.

We haven't tested it yet, but here is a pretty comprehensive overview/review of Sapie, that is well worth reading.

In the meantime.. Take a look at this performance comparison chart!

We hope to be speaking with Speereo's PR Manager, Gleb Klimshin fairly soon and he's promised to discuuss some Wireless Speech Programs they've developed..If they are up to par with Speereo's other products..

National Instruments - programming w/ speech!

2008-06-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

National Instruments "LabVIEW Real-Time Modules", that develop reliable and deterministic applications deployed to a variety of scalable hardware targets is vigorously now using Windows Speech Recognition ("WSR") to both program and test their development.

A video is worth a few thousand words:
Click here to see a very interesting demonstration...!!

Nuance vs Vlingo - threatens Yahoo Voice Search?

2008-06-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

Via XEconomy, today;

"If a Texas district court grants an injunction sought by Burlington, MA-based Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN), it could force Yahoo to shut down the voice-enabled version of its mobile search platform. The search tool is powered by software from Vlingo, a Cambridge, MA-based startup Nuance sued yesterday for alleged patent infringement.

The Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) platform, called oneSearch with Voice, works on Blackberry Pearl, Blackberry Curve, and Blackberry 8800 series smartphones, and allows users to enter Web search queries such as “Boston Red Sox scores” or “United Airlines Flight 541″ simply by speaking them into the device. Vlingo’s deal to get its speech recognition technology included in oneSearch was seen as a major coup for the Harvard Square startup, which has about 35 employees and recently closed a $20 million Series B financing round led by Yahoo.

Nuance filed its lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, a jurisdiction famous for favoring plaintiffs in patent-infringement cases. Xconomy obtained a copy of Nuance’s complaint. It alleges that Vlingo’s speech recognition software—including “without limitation, products and services Vlingo is supplying to Yahoo! oneSearch”—infringes on U.S. Patent No. 6,766,295, which was issued to Nuance engineers Hy Murviet and Ashvin Kannan in 2004. The patent covers a technique for making computerized transcription of a users’ speech more accurate over time using audio samples from multiple sessions such as phone calls.

The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages and attorney fees, and also asks the court to “preliminarily and permanently restrain” Vlingo and its business partners from making, using, and selling the allegedly infringing software. Those partners would presumably include Yahoo's 'one search with Voice' platform."

Speech Analytics - an evolving business resource..

2008-06-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

Speech analytics technology has evolved in recent years, providing organizations with insight into sales, service and products gleaned from the voice biometrics of customers.

It has also brought a dilemma for organizations deploying it - Does it belong under the hands-on management of the contact center? Or should marketing govern its use? Or maybe it should remain under the strict control of Business Intelligence (BI)?

An important question organizations need to consider when they're purchasing speech analytics tools, according to Keith Dawson, senior analyst with Frost and Sullivan.

"There is no one way to determine which is best -- different options are good at different points," Dawson said. "A lot of it is going to depend on where the purchaser's analytics culture is."

Vendors that have developed speech analytics typically promote just the core speech analytics functions; Parsing recordings for meanings, establishing patterns and alerting users to unseen connections; but there are actually three primary philosophies for organizations purchasing speech analytics.

Businesses with entrenched speech technology in self service or other speech-recognition tools might take the "what's it doing re: in-house performance" approach.

In the contact center environment, agent performance optimization vendors are pushing the technology from the workforce optimization side. Speech analytics are a way to both measure agent skills, and train them as well.

When presented as a marketing tool/revenue producer, discussions on buying speech analytics turns from cost cutting to profits.
Contact center mangement has often concentrated only on cost control;
Average Handle Time ("AHT") or per-call Average Work Time ("AWT");
and have mostly ignored profit and revenue.

|
"They're going to have to collaborate with business people who don't care about the activities & performance inside the call center -- they care only about the outcomes," Dawson said.

The most remote speech-driven system yet?

2008-06-10T17:43:00.000-07:00

On Bantayan Island in the Philippines, to prove its new speech-driven services work, the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) unveiled a remote voice biometrics (a/k/a "voice recognition") system for its members on a picturesque island located in the northernmost tip of Cebu.

"If it will work in Bantayan Island, it will work anywhere," said GSIS President and General Manager Winston Garcia, in a briefing here. Garcia said the service is being launched as part of its modernization program. "This system removes the need for them to go to a GSIS office to renew their pension status. They can now do so remotely, via a phone call," noted Garcia, explaining how the system is intended to reduce large inbound call queues into GSIS offices.

The service was beta-tested in the United States prior to the local (Cebu) launch; E.G. Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Hawaii.

The speech driven "GSIS Voice Activated Processing System" (G-VAPS) enables its 1.2 million members to transact with the GSIS using their unique voice as their "electronic signature,". The system is secure, and is be able to detect "tape-recorded" as opposed to live speech. Active members and pensioners call a US-based GSIS Teleservice toll free number to use the service.

Currently, it allows members to apply for and process loans. It can also be initially used by pensioners to renew their status to active members; Active members can then go to GSIS office to record their voice after presenting proper identities.

"This is voluntary but it provides them convenience," said Garcia when asked if he expects all members to avail of this new service. He also noted GSIS Wireless Automated Processing System kiosks remain another option to apply for loans.

Garcia further noted the system was customized by its own information technology department.

Speech recognition's "mainstream", in unusual fields

2008-06-07T09:12:00.001-07:00

Cited primarily from an article at http://computer.getmash.net/;

Speech recognition has long languished in the no-man’s land between sci-fi fantasy (”Computer, engage warp drive!”) and everyday usage reality.

But that’s changing fast, as advances in computing power, artificial intelligence, powerful API's & newly available WSR Macros, make speech recognition the next powerful step for everyday use by "non-geek" users, user-interface design and now electronic voice-based security.

As to voice-based security: A whole host of highly advanced speech technologies, including emotion and lie detection, are moving from the lab to the marketplace.

This not a new technology,” says Daniel Hong, an analyst at Datamonitor who specializes in speech technology. “But it took a long time for Moore’s Law to make it viable.”

Mr. Hong estimates at the speech technology market is worth more than $2 billion, with plenty of growth in embedded and network apps.

And it’s about time. Speech recognition's technology has been around since the 1950s, but only recently have computer processors and accompanying artificial intelligence become powerful enough to handle the complex algorithms required to recognize our speech, both local & remote, improve our lives & productivity, and open our eyes to the long tail of speech recognition fields.

A few examples:
There are already several capable voice-controlled technologies on the market. You can issue spoken commands to devices like Motorola’s Mobile TV DH01n, a mobile TV with navigation capabilities, and a host of telematics GPS devices. Microsoft recently announced a deal to slip voice-activation software into cars manufactured by Hyundai and Kia, and its TellMe division is investigating voice-recognition applications for the iPhone. And Indesit, Europe’s second-largest home appliances manufacturer, just introduced the world’s first voice-controlled oven.

Yet as promising as this year’s crop of specch-controlled devices are, they’re just the beginning.

Speech technology comes in several flavors, including the speech recognition that drives voice-activated mobile devices; network systems that power IVR's using automated speech recognition, the unequalled desktop Vista Speech recognition, now with available macros {which we use to post & write articles) and the long-standing the standard in the Healthcare industry, the highly impressive network-based Philips SpeechMagic systems.

Voice biometrics (the true technical description of the often mis-used phrase "voice recognition") is a particularly hot area. Every individual has a unique voice print that is determined by the physical characteristics of his or her vocal tract. By analyzing speech samples for telltale acoustic features, voice biometrics can verify a speaker’s identity either in person or over the phone, without the specialized hardware required for fingerprint or retinal scanning.

The technology can also have unanticipated consequences. When the Australian social services agency Centrelink began using voice biometrics to authenticate users of its automated phone system, the software started to identify welfare fraudsters who were claiming multiple benefits — something a simple password system could never do.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council has issued guidance requiring stronger security than simple ID and password combinations, which is expected to drive widespread adoption of voice verification by U.S. financial institutions in coming years. Ameritrade, Volkswagen and European banking giant ABN AMRO all employ voice-authentication systems already.

Advanced voice-recognition systems that can tell if a speaker is agitated, anxious or lying are also in the pipeline.

Computer scientists (e.g. at Carnegie Mellon) have already developed software that can identify emotional states and even truthfulness by analyzing acoustic features like pitch and intensity, and lexical ones like the use of contractions and particular parts of speech. And they are honing their algorithms using the massive amounts of real-world speech data collected by call centers and free 411 speech-driven services such as the extremely popular Goog411.

A reliable, speech-based lie detector would be a boon to law enforcement and the military. But broader emotion detection could be useful as well. Our host company which developed the now-standard Law Enforcement "Mobile Prosecutor" is presently experimenting with embedding it with voice-stress analysis.

In another example, a virtual call center agent that could sense a customer’s mounting frustration and route her to a live agent would save time, money and customer loyalty.

“It’s not quite ready, but it’s coming pretty soon,” says James Larson, an independent speech application consultant who co-chairs the W3C Voice Browser Working Group.

Companies like Autonomy eTalk claim to have functioning anger and frustration detection systems already, but experts are skeptical. According to Julia Hirschberg, a computer scientist at Columbia University, “The systems in place are typically not ones that have been scientifically tested.”

According to Hirschberg, lab-grade systems are currently able to detect anger with accuracy rates in “the mid-70s to the low 80s.”

They are even better at detecting uncertainty, which could be helpful in automated training contexts. (Imagine a computer-based tutorial that was sufficiently savvy to drill you in areas you seemed unsure of.)

Lie detection via voice stress & syntax-pattern deviation analysis is a tougher nut to crack, but progress is being made.

In a study funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security, Hirschberg and several colleagues used software tools developed by SRI to scan statements that were known to be either true or false. Scanning for 250 different acoustic and lexical cues, “We were getting accuracy maybe around the mid- to upper-60s,” she says.

That may not sound so hot, but it’s a lot better than the commercial speech-based lie detection systems currently on the market. According to independent researchers, such “voice stress analysis” systems are no more reliable than a coin-toss.

It may be awhile before industrial-strength emotion and lie detection come to a call center near you. But make no mistake: They are just around the proverbial corner. And they will be preceded by a mounting tide of gadgets that you can talk to, argue with and intelligently discuss topics with.

Don’t be surprised if, some day soon, your Bluetooth headset tells you to calm down. Or informs you that your last caller was lying through his teeth.

Now that Windows Speech Recognition Macros for Windows Vista™ are in feverish development, both in-house (Microsoft Speech Components Group [ listen_+at+_microsoft.com ], and the beta group inside the Microsoft Speech Yahoo Technical Group) - desktop speech recognition is advancing daily by leaps and bounds, literally.

Powerful WSR macros that can, for example:

Open e-mail messages from a specific (non-Inbox) account with TO: / CC: / BCC: and Subject: fields already completed;

Macros that can move large blocks of extant text in and out of specific locations inside different applications;

Navigate & move items in and out of various folders inside Vista Explorer;

Spoken database lookups

are already evolving and being used & improved daily. It will not be long before speech recognition becomes "what we just use" for most of our daily work & living activities..

(A detailed post on the powerful new WSR Macro Tool & evolving macros is coming soon; We're gathering data, useful macros and research to be sure it is both interesting & useful to all types of speech recognition users)

Remote speech recognition, with Instinct!

2008-06-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

Samsung's "Instinct" mobile device, scheduled to become available June 20th, now includes some rather advanced speech recognition coupled with nice artificial intelligence features. Slated to be a viable i-Phone competitor, this feature certainly helps that "battle", IOHO.

Via Gizmodo's very nice article:
"Samsung's Instinct may be the best stab at the coveted title of iPhone killah this CTIA. The 3.1-inch touchscreen phone has localized haptic feedback, plus three hard navigation keys.

Check out the well-done You Tube video:

Let's hope the Instinct turns out to be all it's promised.. This advanced speech recognition should really begin to galvanize widespread recognition of true remote speech recognition, from newly arriving moble devices!

Speech-Recognition, translation style!

2008-06-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Speereo, a leading developer for voice recognition software offers a new "Free UEFA Euro 2008 Guide" complete with its popular application called Speereo Voice Translator.

Speereo Voice Translator is a perfect solution for travelers and understands every spoken word. Once the user pronounces a phrase in his native language, Speereo Voice Translator immediately reads back the same phrase in one of 14 languages included into an application. It is designed for devices that have Windows Mobile (Pocket PC and Smartphones) or Symbian OS installed.

Via the Speereo web page:
"Speereo Voice Translator is available in two versions: multilanguage and two language. Multilanguage version of Speereo Voice Translator for business communication and traveling, running on smartphones and Pocket PCs, is an innovative phrasebook that provides translation among 14 languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Turkish, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, formal Arabic, Finnish"

It seems speech recognition becomes more ubiquitous.. every week!

Adobe Releases Speech-Recognition Indexing

2008-05-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

Via several non-official Adobe-centered blogs and news articles, Adobe has released a Soundbooth Beta that showcases a host of new features, including new speech recognition technology that lets users create transcripts of dialogue tracks quickly and search them for words and phrases across their timeline.

Adobe hasn't yet published any official press releases, so this feature may be a tad undocumented and in early beta form to date.

They also have not disclosed which engine they are using (if it's not propreitary) to parse spoken audio tracks for speech recognition indexing.

We've blogged about the two most popular such engines, Everyzing's "Ramp" and it's predecessor and core technology, MIT's "Lecture Browser" from CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) and it's very likely this indexing uses these platforms or variations thereof (IOHO), although new "automated indexing of video's spoken audio" technology is emerging from several new entities, including IBM.

Tweet by phone.. TwitterFone!

2008-05-07T15:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true.. Now you can Tweet by phone.

We didn't get an invite yet, but we'll be sure to post more when we do..

SPEAK: Speech-enabled auto attendant for SMB's!

2008-05-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

Active Voice has rolled out a turnkey speech enabled auto-attendant that's priced and aimed at small to mid-sized business markets, named "SPEAK".

Via the press release & web page:
"The engineering framework of SPEAK is designed to be a sophisticated turnkey solution that is considerably more affordable, while being easy to implement, easy to deploy and easy to use. Thus, SPEAK provides SMBs a practical solution for speech attendant, corporate directory as well as mobility access."

Some productivity features the maker notes:

Upgrades customer service while reducing “zero-out” calls

Eliminates the push button frustration as well as the need to search for numbers

Provides total 24/7/365 self-service information such as employee and department directories, company information, driving directions, business hours, etc.

Performs dynamic call routing to ensure all incoming callers are treated in a personalized and professional manner

Frees front desk support to deal with important face-to-face matters

Keeps mobile workforces connected efficiently and provides hands-free access for safety

Reduces the need for maintaining and printing company directories

Secures access to your telephony resources across all networks

Per Eyal Inbar, General Manager of Marketing and Product Development:
"Active Voice SPEAK leverages LumenVox's cutting-edge Speech Engine and Digium's open standard hardware, enabling SPEAK to be offered at a price point that is unbeatable in the market and at a level of sophistication that is yet to be experienced by SMBs. The bottom line of SPEAK is simplicity, affordability and ease of use."

Plug-n-Play medical speech recognition from Dolbey

2008-05-05T16:43:00.000-07:00

Dolbey has announced the release of "Voice2Text" (powered by Royal Philips Electronics); the first medical speech recognition transcription system that allows medical customers to keep their existing document platform!

Via the Dolbey PDF product sheet:
"Voice2Text is unique in that the speech recognition has been integrated with Dolbey’s Fusion Voice digital dictation system and provides simple, yet functional integration to a company’s existing document platform."

Voice2Text is unique in yet another area;
"This non-invasive approach to applying back-end speech is uniquely being offered in a pay-as-you-go model to minimize upfront investment"(Dolbey's Product PDF).

It's certainly exciting to see these recent advances in speech recognition, particularly as they become simpler and more effective..

Speech recognition grows by 100% in the military

2008-05-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

According to a Businesswire.com article today;
Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking® Medical software has seen a one hundred percent growth over the last year.

Via the businesswire.com article;
"Dragon Medical has extended its value into the Federal government through its seamless integration with AHLTA, the military’s electronic health record, to enable clinical documentation through accurate voice-to-text speech recognition. According to a survey performed across 17 distinct Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps medical treatment facilities, 79.9 percent of those surveyed chose Dragon Medical as their preferred method for documenting care within AHLTA."

Craig Rohan, Staff Pediatrician at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado is quoted as saying:
“Speech recognition technology allows for more thorough and expedited documentation of our patient encounters. Since using Dragon Medical I find that medical statements are more easily captured during routine clinic workflow. The comprehensive medical vocabulary Dragon Medical works off of ensures that the symptoms or diagnosis we say are correctly documented”
and
“More advanced users of Dragon Medical can take advantage of features such as 'macros', 'shortcuts' and other tools that further streamline documentation by producing a partially, or in some cases fully populated medical record when prompted by the command ‘normal study,’ for example. We’ve seen significant productivity improvements across those who have embraced speech recognition to document care.”

President Bush has set a goal for Americans to have an electronic health record by 2014. The DOD began AHLTA; an always available electronic health record for all active military, retirees and their families and expects to have it fully implemented by 2011.

A comment about Fujitsu's DSR from a reader

2008-04-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

It's no secret we are propnents of Distributed Speech Recognition (DSR), and one of our readers posted an encouraging comment about the NTT DoCoMo F884i..

The comment from Mike:
"I spoke to President (and soon chairman) Suzuki of Advanced Media last week about DSR and the handset by Fujitsu uses the Fujitsu/AM DSR and not the ETSI Standard that has been implemented on other DoCoMo 905i series phones and all future FOMA phones in Japan. Very nifty indeed!"

It's great news to hear that DSR is gaining well deserved footholds!

Garmin's nuvi 880 gets great recognition!

2008-04-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

The Garmin nuvi 880, the first navigation unit with full bragging rights to great speech recognition has garnered some glowing reviews from various websites.

One particular review by PC Magazine's Craig Ellison gives some detailed results from a former Dragon speech recognition user, and all in all, our hats are off to a great product with real speech recognition!

More speech recognition enabled robots..

2008-04-21T01:59:00.000-07:00

The original REEM-A and the new REEM-B, being shown for the 1st time in Abu Dhabi April, 2008 offers speech recognition as well as other advanced robotic features! {Speech recognition featured in the last segments below}

More from the manufacturer can be read here

Microsoft's new Response Point partners..

2008-04-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

It's been sort of a "slow" week for speech recognition, but yesterday Microsoft announced (2) new SIP Partners for their cool new Response Point, speech recognition-enabled software-based PBX.

The two firms, Cbeyond and New Global Telecom (NGT) will provide SIP services for the Microsoft Response Point digital voice/IP-VoIP PBX phone systems designed for for small businesses.

After completing extensive interoperability testing, NGT became the first certified, Microsoft recommended service provider offering industry-standard SIP phone services that work superbly with the Response Point systems.

CBeyond and NGT were selected as partners because of their nationwide coverage, high quality of voice service, and customer satisfaction. Each service provider will roll out unique partner programs for VARs to boost their ability to reach and service small businesses with Response Point.

EveryZing rolls out RAMP

2008-04-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

EveryZing, a leader in the new technology of indexing the spoken audio inside video clips,today announces RAMP (Reach, Access, Monetization and Protection) that gives media companies control over how their content is discovered, distributed, presented and consumed.

For those who don't know about EveryZing's technology:
Via EzeryZing's website:

"EveryZing’s patented speech-to-text technology wraps every piece of audio and video from your site in a rich layer of metadata, including a full text output of the spoken word track."

and

"At the heart of EveryZing’s solutions is our core speech-to-text technology – the fruit of $100 million of government-funded research by BBN Technologies (inventor of the internet’s ubiquitous “@” symbol). EveryZing’s speech-to-text technology enables multimedia clips to be robustly indexed, increasing their “discoverability” by the web search engines and boosting online advertising opportunities. EveryZing uses its technology to ensure that every piece of audio and video from each client’s web site is wrapped in a rich layer of metadata, including a full text output of the spoken word track, so it can be searched and accessed easily and precisely by consumers, just like text… and, as a result, online advertisers can now place contextually relevant messages within and along side multimedia content, just like text."

More on RAMP, via their website:

"RAMP is EveryZing’s point-and-click web multimedia management console, giving you control over your content, context and brand. RAMP makes it easy for “infotainment” web site operators to control every aspect of the audio and video content on your site – from full-text indexing the clips, to publishing them in any format you choose, to monitoring visitor traffic. RAMP ensures reach, access, monetization and protection of your online audio and video.

Based in Cambridge, Mass., EveryZing is a pioneer in next-generation universal search technology and video search engine optimization (video SEO). EveryZing was originally founded by BBN Technologies, creators of the email @ symbol. The company’s core intellectual property and capabilities include speech-to-text technology and natural language processing.

EveryZing's automated speech recognition is impressive, to say the least; It even outputs line-by-line transcriptions. We've blogged about them before, and they continue to impress us as their technoloy evolves.

DoCoMo's new handset; built-in speech recognition

2008-04-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc (NYSE: DCM) is releasing the FOMA "Raku-Raku Phone Premium" F884i mobile phone today, with built-in speech recognition for remote transcription of email text.

The handset, made by Fujitsu Ltd, contains new & proprietary technology to enter e-mail text using remote speech recognition. If the "voice input" button in the e-mail editing display is pressed, software that extracts the characteristics of the user's speech (and performs Analog-to-Digital conversion) will start, and access the DoCoMo's i-mode site.

When users say what they want transcribed into an email, the in-box software sends the dictation to the i-mode server. There, speech recognition software manufactured by Advanced Media Inc outputs transcribed text. The F884i receives the transcribed text, displays it in the email's text display interface.

As best we can tell, without a direct response from DoCoMo or Advanced Media - This appears to be DSR (Distributed Speech Recognition) which we've blogged about in the past; and we are tremendous fans of DSR as a global answer to near-perfect mobile speech recognition.

We've also emailed David Pearce, founder and Chief Developer of this emerging technology to see if he has any information on whether this may, in fact be DSR..
Check back later for details!

Pioneer's LINC releases, with "intent" recognition

2008-04-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

Pioneer's Mobile Entertainment Division (Long Beach, Ca.) is releasing the promised AVIC-F500BT LINC (Lifestyle Innovation Network Console), a portable navigation and speech recognition unit.

The LINC's main function: An in-dash GPS device with 1.2 million points of interest, an SD slot and it uses MSN for traffic, weather and gas price updates.

What's cool is the device incorporates Pioneer's "VoiceBox Conversational Voice Search Platform," a nicely developed speech recognition system that enables iPod or other MP3 players and voice control for you Bluetooth-connected phone.

VoiceBox's innovation is it's extraction algorihm that allow what Pioneer terms "conversational commands" and "intent recognition", and very advanced noise-canceling that deals quite well with ambient vehicle noise and the presence of extra voices.

The conversational element is its ability to deduce various forms of basic commands. "I want to hear the artist Herbie Hancock" or "Play Herbie Hancock" will produce the same result.
(** The LINC offers iPod-specific playback recognitions such as album name, playlist name or music genre.)

Pioneer's "conversational recognition" spreads it's wings with the ability to extract a relevant phrase from a inside a long utterance, that contains irrelevant words: "Uhh, play, hmm, let's see, that album Abbey Road". The unit has the capacity to ignore extra words it decides are superflous.

Pioneer's "Intent Recognition" is a artificial intelligence that reponds at a higher level to enhance the user's interactive abilities. With typical command & control, pre-defined, specific commands like "Call Phil Donnahue at home" or "Call Georg Bush on the mobile phone" are prerequisite. Pioneer's AI prompts for additional information, if it appears necessary for a positive recognition; E.G. "I have 2 numbers for James Caan - Home and Mobile. Which one would you like to call?"

An excellenc cnet.com video from CES 2008, of the LINC can be seen here.

Speech recognition moves into Flight Simulators

2008-04-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

As of March 7th, the flight simulation game add-in First Officer released. First Officer is 100% command& control speech recognition, complete with a training interface, and spoken confirmation of commands!.

Via their website:
"Gone are the days of having to read 45 minutes of text to a computer; speech
recognition technology has come a long way in the last 5 years.
Lengthy speech recognition training is no longer required and individual
commands can be trained when needed."