pam@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (.) (01/09/89)
In article <6890> pardo@cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) writes: | >>>Good speech recognition hardware can't be more than 5 or 10 | >>>years away, can it? | >>>-Peter Schachte | diamond@csl.sony.JUNET (Norman Diamond) writes: | >Well, in 1956, in an advertisement on the back cover of Scientific | >American, speech recognition equipment was only 4 years away. | And 1989 - (1956 + 4) = *29* years. Now we're down to only 5 or 10. | Say, that's progress! -- It's here! -- But how come there are no Speech Recognition boards for the Macintosh? There are plenty for IBM PC's. Both Speaker Dependent (you have to teach them your voice first) and Speaker Independent (they'll recognize anybody's voice, but only recognize a limited vocabulary of words) Here are some speech recognition products that are available today for IBM's: VOTAN Voice Card: Using continuous recognition, vocabulary words may be spoken in a natural, conversational flow withourt having to pause between the words. The board recognizezs words from a user's library of word templates. The Votan Voice Card will hold approximately 300 continuous templates and 300 isolated templates Through the use of vocabulary swapping the vocabulary size is constrained only by the computer's memory. The Votan Voice Card has been field tested at 100 decibels with 99% accuracy. The card can operate in any language. [Votan, 4487 Technology Drive, Fremont, CA 94538 (415) 490-7600] Voice Control Systems VCS1000 is a multifunctional speaker-independent voice recognition module for IBM pc's. The VCS 1000 comes with specialized vocabularies such as the "Voice Director" module which allows the recognition of 41 control words such as On, Off, Begin, Stop, Faster, Slower, Left, Right, Up, Down, Forward, Backward, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and zero). This module is useful for factory machine control. Other modules are available and it is also possible to connect the VCS 1000 to the telephone line for speaker independent voice recognition over public switched telephone network. [Voice Control Systems, 14140 Midway Rd Ste 100, Dallas, TX 75244 214-386-5555] Covox, Inc Voice Master PC Digitizer with Voice Recognition is capable of recognizing 64 user-trained words or phrases. User can control the vocabulary syntax and recognition accureacy. Recognition voice templates can be saved to disk. Speech recording and recognition software can be used together for a two way verbal exchange with your computer. [Covox, Inc, 675 Conger St, eugene, Oregon 97402 (503)-342-1271] Speech Systems Incorporated Speech Input Development Syste allows recognition of continuous speech. Not only words, but also phrases and complete sentences. SSI's Speach Input Development System can recognize speech from a variety of speakers. (i.e. it is Speaker Independent) [Speech Systems Inc, 18356 Oxnard St, Tarzana, CA 91356 (818)-881-0885] DRAGON Systems Inc. VOICESCRIBE voice recognition systems allow an active vocabulary of 1000 user difined words and phrases with 99.5% recognition accuracy. It is language independent and functions equally well in noisy environments. It operates on a speaker dependent basis, or with proper training from a cross-section of people, on a speaker independent basis. [Dragon Systems, Inc 90 Bridge St., Newton, MA 02158 (617) 965-5200] Westinghouse Voice Systems Series 1000 Voice Data Entry System offers Speaker Dependent Voice Recognition for data collection. It also offers text to speech voice synthesis. [Westinghouse Voice Systems, East Park 1, Rodi Rd. Pgh, PA 15235 412-825-3500] Astronics ASTROVOIS Voice Operated Information System offers a vocabulary of 1000 speaker dependent words for industrial inspection systems. It is a standard size PC card and comes with 8 diskettes of software. [Astronics, 12501 Prosperity Dr Ste 250 Silver Sprg, MD 20904 (3012)-680-0880] The Voice Connection InfroVoice VI offers Voice Recognition and Speech Synthesis for the IBM PC/XT/AT and PS/2 Model 30. It is a half-size circuit board that offers voice recognition of 500 words with an accurace better than 98%. [Voice Connection, 17835 Skypark Circle, Ste C, Irvine CA 92714 714-261-2366] *** So where are the Voice Recognition systems for the Mac??? *** - Anybody have experience with any of the above mentioned products? Comments? - Anybody know of any other Voice Recognition products for the MAC or IBM? - How about Voice Response (Touchtone) Systems (ala WATSON)? ---end of forwarded message---
pkahn@meridian.ads.com (Phil Kahn) (01/10/89)
In article <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> pam@uhccux.UUCP (.) writes: > >-- It's here! -- But how come there are no Speech Recognition boards for the >Macintosh? There are plenty for IBM PC's. Both Speaker Dependent (you have to >teach them your voice first) and Speaker Independent (they'll recognize >anybody's voice, but only recognize a limited vocabulary of words) > Check the 7/19/88 MacWEEK (front page). There are two boards from a company called Articulate Systems (415-549-1013). A 1000 word board (VoiceNavigator1000, $1250) and a 200 word board (VoiceNavigator200, $750). Requires training (i.e., speaker dependent). Clever interface to Mac. Is SCSI and ADB based. Two modes for use: 1) program interrupts when keyword detected, 2) have keyword recognition imitate keyboard or mouse action (so it can be front-ended to most applications). I have no experience with the board whatsoever except for literature and conversations with the company. phil...
clive@drutx.ATT.COM (Clive Steward) (01/10/89)
From article <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, by pam@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (.): Gee, that was a really nice list of the PC voice recognition products. The thing is, I think what people are saying is that this kind of product, while useful, is a far distance indeed from machine recognition of even careful casual connected speech. I played with a '1000 word' system like these about 15 years ago, which someone in the Technical Center had bought at Tektronix, for playing with. Cost $10,000 then, was much larger than a PC card. I taught it some Korean, which it (for sound phonemic reasons) phound (it's a fitting brainwave typo, I don't know where these things come from but they're sometimes fun) easier to distinguish than American. I'd just wanted to know if its sound pattern matching algorithms were ethnocentric. What's nice is that the price and size have gone down. And yes, it would surely be fun to have such a card for a Mac bus. Maybe with the new Mac bus? But do people buy Mac II[x]+ for being driven by simple voice commands? Though it could be wonderful for say a person whose body fails them in certain ways. Tell the windows to move around, things to open, talk letters at least into appearing, with all the formatting and see what you'll get advantages of Mac. Maybe we need a Mac bus to PC bus converter just for running such cards. Shouldn't be so expensive, or hard, as long as super performance wasn't goal. Clive Steward
fmg@homxc.ATT.COM (F.GOLDSTEIN) (01/10/89)
In article <6562@zodiac.UUCP>, pkahn@meridian.ads.com (Phil Kahn) writes: > Check the 7/19/88 MacWEEK (front page). There are two boards from a > company called Articulate Systems (415-549-1013). ... > I have no experience with the board whatsoever except for literature > and conversations with the company. I have seen the board in action (Boston MacWorld Expo). I believe that at that time, it was still under development but it was still very slick. Training the board was a snap and the interface was fairly clean. I have no financial affiliation with the company - one of my good friends is an engineer for Articulate Systems. Floyd -- Floyd Goldstein AT&T Bell Laboratories att!homxc!fmg (or) homxc!fmg@att.com arpa!homxc!fmg (or) homxc!fmg@att.arpa
casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres) (01/11/89)
In article <6562@zodiac.UUCP> pkahn@ads.com (Phil Kahn) writes: >In article <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> pam@uhccux.UUCP (.) writes: >>... how come there are no Speech Recognition boards for the Macintosh? >Check the 7/19/88 MacWEEK (front page). There are two boards from a >company called Articulate Systems (415-549-1013). A 1000 word board >(VoiceNavigator1000, $1250) and a 200 word board (VoiceNavigator200, $750). Just a point of information: These aren't boards, they're boxes. Being SCSI peripherals, they can be used with any Mac that has a SCSI port, i.e. Mac Plus or later. David Casseres
srpenndo@uokmax.UUCP (Sean Richard Penndorf) (01/11/89)
In article <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> pam@uhccux.UUCP (.) writes: => =>In article <6890> pardo@cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) writes: =>| >>>Good speech recognition hardware can't be more than 5 or 10 =>| >>>years away, can it? =>| >>>-Peter Schachte => =>| diamond@csl.sony.JUNET (Norman Diamond) writes: => =>-- It's here! -- But how come there are no Speech Recognition boards for the =>Macintosh? There are plenty for IBM PC's. Both Speaker Dependent (you have to =>teach them your voice first) and Speaker Independent (they'll recognize =>anybody's voice, but only recognize a limited vocabulary of words) Most of the articles I have seen about Mac Speech Recognition are talking about things that are much farther than just Speech Recognition. One company already has the ability to understand speech. However, rather than market what they have so far, they are continuing research. They are attempting to teach their AI software to understand the language of English (later other languages as well) to use it as a dictation word-processor. That is, you only speak to your computer to compose documents or letters. The problems they are having at the moment were the understanding of voice inflections, dialects, and words that sound the same, but are spelled different (hononyms?). Sorry I don't have that article in front of me or I would tell you more. Imagine...Microsoft Word on the Mac where you do not to use a keyboard or a mouse. Now that's Mac user friendly interface! -- Sean 'Longstride' Penndorf !texsun!uokmax!srpenndo . . .----------- GEnie: S.PENNDORF | | `---. srpenndo@uokmax.UUCP `--'LTIMATUM----'OFTWARE
hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (01/12/89)
In article <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> pam@uhccux.UUCP (.) writes: }Speech Systems Incorporated Speech Input Development Syste allows recognition }of continuous speech. Not only words, but also phrases and complete sentences. }SSI's Speach Input Development System can recognize speech from a variety of }speakers. (i.e. it is Speaker Independent) }[Speech Systems Inc, 18356 Oxnard St, Tarzana, CA 91356 (818)-881-0885] }- Anybody have experience with any of the above mentioned products? Comments? I did some work with the SSI box about a year ago. At that time, what it recognized were "utterances". An utterance could be a word, a phrase, a sentence or almost anything. What it couldn't do was pick individual words out of a multiple word utterance. It could only recognize utterances that were in it's library of utterances. If the sentence "I see a blue box." was in it's library it would recognize it as "Iseeabluebox". If you gave it "I see a red box.", it wouldn't recognize the phrase or, worse, might decide you'd come close enough to "I see a blue box." to recognize it as such. (You could put things in the library like "I see a [blue | red] box.", but that was just a notational convenience). I don't know what developments or improvements SSI has made in the past year, but I assume there've been some, so the above may no longer apply. -- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com) Illegitimati Nil Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 452-9191, x2483 Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun|philabs|psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
wald-david@CS.YALE.EDU (david wald) (01/13/89)
In article <2209@uokmax.UUCP> srpenndo@uokmax.UUCP (Sean Richard Penndorf) writes: >In article <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> pam@uhccux.UUCP (.) writes: >>In article <6890> pardo@cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) writes: >>>>>>Good speech recognition hardware can't be more than 5 or 10 >>>>>>years away, can it? >>>>>>-Peter Schachte >>-- It's here! -- But how come there are no Speech Recognition boards for the >>Macintosh? There are plenty for IBM PC's. Both Speaker Dependent (you have to >>teach them your voice first) and Speaker Independent (they'll recognize >>anybody's voice, but only recognize a limited vocabulary of words) > [discussion of up'n'coming Mac speech recognition AI.] > >Imagine...Microsoft Word on the Mac where you do not to use a keyboard or a >mouse. Now that's Mac user friendly interface! Not for me. I've never understood people who can vocally dictate a substantial document. My writing style is just not linear. Part of this is a cut-and-paste style, in which sentences and paragraphs get written first and then put into the proper place, and part is the fact that I'm rarely writing just a single paragraph at a time. I suppose it might work if I had the mouse available to move around, and the speech recognition was only used to insert text, but I can't think of a convenient way to move the insertion point using only speech. Besides, for anything except text insertion, you have to have some way of informing the computer that what you are saying is a direction, rather than more text. What's the speech equivalent of a nonprinting character? (It is *not* an unprintable word.) Now, speech recognition plus eye tracking. Maybe. Now, can we put this discussion in a single newsgroup, please? Followups to comp.cog-eng. -David ============================================================================ David Wald wald-david@yale.UUCP waldave@yalevm.bitnet wald-david@cs.yale.edu "A monk, a clone and a ferengi decide to go bowling together..." ============================================================================