Computer Speech Technology

This new book is the first to provide a truly understandable, non-technical overview of all the major areas in the computer processing of human speech -- speech recognition, speech synthesis, speaker recognition, language identification, lip synchronization, and co-channel separation. It takes a unique, nonmathematical approach in exploring the nature of human language and its impact on the science and methodologies of computer voice technology. In one, easy-to-read source, you gain a deeper understanding of the fundamentals, uses, and applications of the technology itself and of the strengths and weaknesses of various systems. A time-saving glossary of technical terms is included.

"This book provides practitioners and researchers with information that will allow them to better assist the speech disabled who wish to utilize computer synthesized speech (CSS) technology"--Provided by publisher.

This book gives an overview of the research and application of speech technologies in different areas. One of the special characteristics of the book is that the authors take a broad view of the multiple research areas and take the multidisciplinary approach to the topics. One of the goals in this book is to emphasize the application. User experience, human factors and usability issues are the focus in this book.

This book deals with two important technologies in human-computer interaction: computer generation of synthetic speech and computer recognition of human speech. It addresses the problems in generating speech with varying precision of articulation and how to convey moods and attitudes.

New material treats such contemporary subjects as automatic speech recognition and speaker verification for banking by computer and privileged (medical, military, diplomatic) information and control access. The book also focuses on speech and audio compression for mobile communication and the Internet. The importance of subjective quality criteria is stressed. The book also contains introductions to human monaural and binaural hearing, and the basic concepts of signal analysis. Beyond speech processing, this revised and extended new edition of Computer Speech gives an overview of natural language technology and presents the nuts and bolts of state-of-the-art speech dialogue systems.

An examination of more than sixty years of successes and failures in developing technologies that allow computers to understand human spoken language. Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey famously featured HAL, a computer with the ability to hold lengthy conversations with his fellow space travelers. More than forty years later, we have advanced computer technology that Kubrick never imagined, but we do not have computers that talk and understand speech as HAL did. Is it a failure of our technology that we have not gotten much further than an automated voice that tells us to "say or press 1"? Or is there something fundamental in human language and speech that we do not yet understand deeply enough to be able to replicate in a computer? In The Voice in the Machine, Roberto Pieraccini examines six decades of work in science and technology to develop computers that can interact with humans using speech and the industry that has arisen around the quest for these technologies. He shows that although the computers today that understand speech may not have HAL's capacity for conversation, they have capabilities that make them usable in many applications today and are on a fast track of improvement and innovation. Pieraccini describes the evolution of speech recognition and speech understanding processes from waveform methods to artificial intelligence approaches to statistical learning and modeling of human speech based on a rigorous mathematical model--specifically, Hidden Markov Models (HMM). He details the development of dialog systems, the ability to produce speech, and the process of bringing talking machines to the market. Finally, he asks a question that only the future can answer: will we end up with HAL-like computers or something completely unexpected?

Speech technology - the use of speech as a means of sending information to, and receiving information from computer systems has been in use as a research tool for many years. Only recently has it begun to move out of the laboratory and into commercially worthwhile applications, first with compressed and synthesised spoken messages, then with computer recognition of spoken messages, and today with diverse applications involving both recognition and reproduction of human speech. We have written this book because we believe the technology has now advanced to the point where many more applications of voice recognition and response are both feasible and economically attractive. Computers that can understand everyday speech are still a distant prospect, but provided the limitations of present day equipment are clearly understood there is much that can be achieved with it. Our aim is to show, in non-technical language, what is now possible with the help of speech technology. The text includes many examples of current applications in industry, commerce and other fields, and we have selected five current industrial applications combining speech recognition and response for more detailed attention. Industrial cases have been chosen both because we see industry as an important growth area for speech applications in the next few years, and because it presents some of the greatest difficulties in speech recognition - if you can make it work in industry, then you can make it work almost anywhere.

Written by the world's top experts in the field, this multidisciplinary book explores all phases of speech technology. Topics covered include: Conversion of computerized (keyboarded) text into synthesized speech, aimed at developing "talking computers" Development of automatic speech recognition, allowing electronic devices to process verbal commands Speech training and the use of synthesized speech for the hearing- and speech-impaired In-depth discussions of specific speech technologies are included, as well as a treatment of the issues and challenges of human-computer interfaces. Oriented toward state-of-the-art applications, the book emphasizes the practical utilization of emerging technologies and includes numerous case studies.