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Open Source Speech Recognition

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hello-computer dept.

bedahr writes "The first version of the open source speech recognition suite simon was released. It uses the Julius large vocabulary continuous speech recognition to do the actual recognition and the HTK toolkit to maintain the language model. These components are united under an easy-to-use graphical user interface. Simon can import dictionaries directly from wiktionary (a subproject of wikipedia) or from files formated in the HADIFIX- or HTK format and grammar structures directly from personal texts. It also provides means to train the language model with new samples and add new words."

9 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. been playing with it by primadd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did use julius for a small project utilizing voice recognition once. While not perfect I was quite impressed by the results of the engine. Quite fun to control the light and TV with shout commands, thought once or twice a movie actually triggered "lights off"

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    1. Re:been playing with it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You might want to do what they do in Star Treck and put a word infront of every command. Something like "Computer: Lights off" will reduce the chance that some random sentences from the TV will trigger the command. Unless you're watching Star Treck ofcourse.

    2. Re:been playing with it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not perfect? Like, if you say "Open the pod bay doors, HAL," it'll say "I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't seem to do that," and try to kill you (even though your name is Steve)?

    3. Re:been playing with it by bedahr · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is actually the simon approach does: the magic keyword is "simon". "simon Firefox" for example. -- bedahr

  2. Aisle of it by ZeroFactorial · · Score: 5, Funny

    Eye musing i trite now two poster slashed hot. It saw grate pro gram!

  3. Re:Are they productive? by Instine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nearly five years ago I used to help a guy who had no useful movement in his limbs. He could use a mouth stick to type and control the cursor. However he also used Dragon Dictate. His machine was old 7 years ago, and here's the amazing bit (to me at least) his speech was pretty garbled from his condition. Most humans found it very hard understanding him, yet the dictation software did a pretty good job. He wrote an entire screen play (later comitioned by the BBC) and was a lawyer with his own practice (it may sound like it but I'm not making this up). His success with this tech was probably what got me into assitive tech (now my job).

    So depends who you are on how much it improves you productivity.

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  4. Re:Project's webpage in English? by bedahr · · Score: 5, Informative

    We are sorry that there is no international homepage for this yet.

    BUT: you are strongly encouraged to contact me with any questions: grasch < at > simon-listens.org

    -- Peter

  5. Re:Open Source, or Microsoft-Owned? by bedahr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Simon is in no way connected to Microsoft.

    Simon does NOT contain the HTK toolkit - it meerly executes commands.

    HTK is free of charge and open source (in the strict sense of you-can-look-at-the-code). It is, however, not "free".

    We are aware of that and have not packaged any parts of HTK for the release - you have to download it yourself if you want to modify the model from within simon.

    It is not optimal, but we don't have the knowledge and / or manpower to code up something similar in a reasonable timeframe. And after all, it isn't that big of a deal, is it?

    -- bedahr

  6. This is not about dictation software by idji · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many people think that "Speech recognition software" = "dictation software" - as is clear from many comments here. That is not simply the case. Dictation is just one application of speech recognition - and a personal application at that - which is the only thing most people come across. Other applications are media transcription (closed captioning), media mining "What did Obama say about the prime mortgage market this week?", telephone call center controlling (Are our staff using naughty words? Is the customer using aggressive language?), telephone call mining ("bomb", "anthrax", ...), indexing vast audio archives of news broadcasts (keyword/topic tagging), aligning audio to human transcription (documentaries, DVD subtitles, witness testimonies, court or parliament proceedings - think of any event that is transcribed like UN conferences), etc. Don't you think CNN, BBC or any national film archive would be interested in searching through there millions of hours of recorded footage? Now you tell me - do you think that the holy grail of speech recognition is "HAL - please close the hatch", "Dear Mom, we are having a lovely time here..." or hearing any TV show in any language you want, or calling anyone in the world and being able to talk to them in your own language? Dictation Software is about the only speech-reco application that can be sold to the masses - all the rest is still fairly much below the horizon...