Development of speech input method for interactive voiceweb systems

Abstract

We have developed a speech input method called "w3voice" to build practical and handy voice-enabled Web applications. It is constructed using a simple Java applet and CGI programs comprising free software. In our website (http://w3voice.jp/), we have released automatic speech recognition and spoken dialogue applications that are suitable for practical use. The mechanism of voice-based interaction is developed on the basis of raw audio signal transmissions via the POST method and the redirection response of HTTP. The system also aims at organizing a voice database collected from home and office environments over the Internet. The purpose of the work is to observe actual voice interactions of human-machine and human-human. We have succeeded in acquiring 8,412 inputs (47.9 inputs per day) captured by using normal PCs over a period of seven months. The experiments confirmed the user-friendliness of our system in human-machine dialogues with trial users. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.