Review of the ARPA SUR Project and Survey of Current Technology in Speech Understanding.
Abstract
The 5 year, nine-contractor ARPA SUR project produced feasibility demonstrations of computer systems that understood spoken sentences related to restricted task domains. This report reviews and evaluates the contributions of that project, including the successful Harpy system developed at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) and other less successful but more ambitious systems developed at CMU, Bolt Beranek and Newman, and System Development Corporation. Harpy successfully understood 95% of the sentences spoken, for a task of document retrieval involving a 1000 word vocabulary. Performances of each system are discussed in light of the complexities of the data retrieval or management tasks undertaken by the system. The project was presented in a context of a history of 26 years of work on various forms of speech recognizers. Past and current technology is surveyed, including the currently available commercial products and several development projects. Gaps in current technology are defined and recommendations for filling those gaps are offered. Speech science centers and coordinated projects are suggested as means to advance the technology and relate the previous research to real applications.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 16, 1979
- Accession Number
- ADA066161
Entities
People
- June E. Shoup
- Wayne A. Lea