Science & Technology - Recognizing Speech In Noise

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGirry Recognizing speech in noise by Dr William Ainsworth, Department of Communication and Neuroscience, University of Keele Few people have any experience of communicating verbally with computers and even fewer have ever done so in a noisy environment. Yet in a factory or when using a telephone in a busy office, recognizing and decoding speech is a familiar problem. But it will take many years of research before the most efficient form of man-machine interface will be evolved, though the task has to be tackled if we are to be able to talk to computers against a background of machinery, in a motor car or on a flight deck. Headway is already being made in analysing the difficulties and outlining ways to overcome them. Speech dominates human communi- cation. If we want people to do something, or we need certain infor- mation from them, we simply speak to them. If they are far away we may write them a letter, but most people prefer to pick up a telephone, perhaps be...