However, for this article, I'm using "voice recognition" to describe these software packages since the correct version of this term is rarely used correctly.) (If we want to get picky, "speech recognition" is the process of converting speech to text, and "voice recognition" is the process of identifying a person by their voice alone. This article compares these two as well as providing general comments on voice recognition technology. IBM’s “40 years of commitment to speech research and development” have in part lead to the ViaVoice software. Morphing through various forms since 1994, Dragon NaturallySpeaking is arguably the best voice recognition software available today.
That's an easy way to describe voice recognition software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM ViaVoice. Talk into a microphone and the computer types what you say. Heck, if my cellphone can't even tell the difference between "Call Mom" and "Call Bob", can a computer do that much better? Happily, the answer is yes. When you consider the use of slang, accents, enunciation (or lack thereof, in my case) and the constantly-evolving rules of language, it's a little easier to understand why we're not yet talking to our TV's remote control. From "Danger, Will Robinson!" to the Star Wars' language translation droid C-3PO, the movies continually assume that computers can and will understand the spoken word as well as any human.
We give people with RSI across Australia the info they need to get the right treatments, navigate the worker’s compensation system and better manage daily life.Įvery little bit helps – so make a donation here to help us as Australia’s only RSI support organisation.The casually-conversing HAL 2000 computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey makes it look easy. We’re a really small organisation doing a really big job. While you’re here, how about helping us out with a donation? These pages provide advice on how you can get the most out of speech recognition software, particularly for those ‘high-end’ users who undertake complex computing tasks, and/or have a medical condition or disability that makes it difficult to operate a computer by hand. Correction of recognition errors is one way of improving recognition over time. Through correct use of the software, the vocabulary and language model will adapt to the user’s speech. This is why you will get better recognition if you speak in longer phrases or sentences. Recent versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking also assess the probability of groups of four words occurring together. For example, while the phrases “whirled tour” and “world tour” sound the same, the software will choose the latter because this combination is more common in speech. Speech recognition software matches sounds to words using a vocabulary, and a language model that assigns a statistical probability to a particular word occurring in speech, as well as the probability of words occurring in a particular context, that is groups of two and three words occurring together. Speech recognition software works by picking up sound waves via the microphone in analogue form, which are then converted to digital information by the soundcard. It remains to be seen whether Vista’s system will work well with Australian accents.
Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, will include a speech recognition system. Other speech recognition products available include ViaVoice and Apple Macintosh’s iListen. A range of computer tasks can be done by voice, including dictation, punctuation, formatting, navigation, correction of recognition errors, commands such as “print document”, “save document” etc (using either built-in commands or custom commands/macros), editing text, opening applications and documents, writing and managing emails, browsing the web and editing spreadsheets.ĭragon NaturallySpeaking is the market leader in speech-recognition computing for PCs, and includes an Australian accent model. These days, speech recognition actually works best when longer phrases are spoken, and accuracy can be as high as 98 to 99%. Speech- operated computing has developed significantly since it first emerged on the market – when it was necessary to pause between each word, and made a lot more mistakes than it does today. Speech recognition software allows you to operate a computer by voice.