Robust numeric recognition in spoken language dialogue

This paper addresses the problem of automatic numeric recognition and under standing in spoken language dialogue. We show that accurate numeric underst anding in fluent unconstrained speech demands maintaining robustness at sev eral different levels of system design, including acoustic, language, under standing and dialogue. We describe a robust system for numeric recognition and present algorithms for feature extraction, acoustic and language modeli ng, discriminative training, utterance verification and numeric understandi ng and validation. Experimental results from a field-trial of a spoken dial ogue system are presented that include customers' responses to credit card and telephone number requests. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights re served.