USE OF AUTOMATIC SPEECH RECOGNITION - CURRENT AND POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS

During the last decade, the development of more sophisticated techniqu es for analysing human speech combined with the increased processing p ower of microcomputers has resulted in improved performance for machin e recognition of human utterances, Consequently, automatic speech reco gnisers are now either operational or being considered in a variety of industrial tasks, telecommunications, office and aerospace environmen ts, and disabled user applications, However, take-up in two of these a pplication areas, namely, in avionics on the aircraft flight deck, and for disabled users, has been slow, The issues surrounding this state of affairs are briefly discussed in this article, with conclusions bei ng drawn on the way forward for these potential application areas.