Usable, real-time, interactive spoken language systems

Abstract

The primary objective of this project is develop a robust, high-performance, domain-independent spoken language system. The system, termed HARC (Hear And Respond to Continuous speech), is composed of the BYBLOS speech recognition and the DELPHI natural language understanding system. The goal is to develop systems that exhibit the following advances: high-accuracy speech understanding with vocabulary of up to 10,000 words; a highly interactive user interface capable of mixed-initiative dialogue and other types of system feedback; transparent adaptability to new users; easy portability to new applications; a system implementable in real-time on cost-effective COTS (commercial, off-the-shelf) hardware.