Advancing Noise Robust Automatic Speech Recognition for Command and Control Applications

Abstract

This is a technical assessment paper intended for use by engineers and research scientist working on the development and integration of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), it will cover the state of speech and recognition technologies with emphasis on noise robust command and control (C2) application. The reliable elimination of the keyboard and mouse in mounted and un-mounted C2 systems has been a desire of systems developers and requirements writers since the development of PC-based ASR systems in the early 1990's. However, current research and commercial quality ASR applications never had the noise robustness to support a truly tactical C2 application. As ASR achieved limited operational success in noisy environments around the 2002 timeframe, the C2 requirements evolved to include the emerging system of systems approach and multilingual operational environments in support of the Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) in such environment's, the system must understand not just words as commands (ASR), but to understand phrases and sentences (semantic and syntactic) and reply in a conversational manner (speech and natural language generation). If the keyboard and mouse are to be truly eliminated, a system now needs to conduct a natural conversation with an operator and possibly others in the operational environment. This paper will cover the advances, limitations, and reasonable expectations from several levels: Research Scientist and Engineers, Program Executive Office (PEO), Program Manager (PM), and requirements office. I will also discuss the major technical challenges that remain as well as some risk assessment to help decision makers align expectations with reasonable availability dates based on current and future research efforts.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 31, 2006
Accession Number
ADA461436

Entities

People

  • James D. Bass

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ambient Noise
  • Automated Speech Recognition
  • Command And Control
  • Computers
  • Digital Signal Processing
  • Engineering
  • Hidden Markov Models
  • Identification
  • Iraqi-War
  • Language
  • Military Research
  • Processing Equipment
  • Recognition
  • Signal Processing
  • Systems Engineering
  • Telephone Systems
  • War Colleges

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - DoD AI Strategy
  • AI & ML - Machine Translation
  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control