Speech recognition just around the corner for mobile devices
Competition is heating up among companies in the speech recognition arena, and those not yet involved want in on the action, which can only be good news for the consumer. Though speech recognition has been available for personal computers since 2001, Bill Meisel, editor of Speech Strategy news, believes speech recognition "is on the cusp of a curve" in the cell phone and other markets. This is due to the competition among a plethora of companies, from startups to well established corporations.
Vlingo is one such company. Last year, Vlingo introduced a small Java application that allows you to dictate texts to your mobile device rather than thumbing them out. Unlike older speech recognition systems that confined you to a set amount of phrases, Vlingo lets you speak naturally and will adapt to the voice of the primary user. Their newest application, Vlingo Find, is in the beta test phase at AT&T and Sprint and is available for download to certain handsets at Vlingo.com. Vlingo's chief executive, Dave Grannan, demonstrated the Find application for Michael Fitzgerald of the New York Times. He asked his phone for a song by Mississippi John Hurt, the location of a local bakery and a web search for a consumer product. It worked promptly and efficiently for all three, and Fitzgerald was able to use it to find an address as well.
Yap, based in Charlotte, N.C., is another startup company that has a voice texting product and is also in the beta test phase for a product similar to Find. Yap's chief executive, Igor Jablokov, wants his product to be supported by advertising but the carriers he is negotiating with want to charge the customer for the service.
Nuance is another player. They just launched their Nuance Voice Control system last August, the same time Vlingo launched their voice text product. Nuance's system is in use by Sprint and can be downloaded to 66 handset models.
And then there is Microsoft. Microsoft walked on the field when it bought TellMe Networks last March. TellMe has a speech driven search like Find that is available to AT&T customers. The product is built in to the Helio Mysto. Microsoft also partnered with Ford to develop Sync, which is based on Nuance technology.
Followed by IBM. David Nahamoo, IBM's speech technology chief says they are beta testing a speech recognition system for cars that will allow drivers to select music without pushing buttons.
There are also companies ready to put these technologies to specific tasks. SimulScribe uses speech recognition to convert voice mail to e-mail. CEO James Siminoff believes "voice recognition has finally hit the point where someone like [SimulScribe] can take it over the hump for specific applications."
James Glass, a principal research scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory believes speech technology will "end up everywhere speech can be useful" and the technology will improve to the point where machines can understand us even through thick accents. According to Opus Research $1.6 billion was spent on speech recognition technology in 2007, and they project a 14.5 percent annual increase over the next three years. With that kind of growth it won't take long for machines that take voice commands to become ubiquitous.
[via cnet]
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