Multilingual low-resourced prototype system for voice-controlled intelligent building applications

Abstract

With speech recognition databases spanning most of the widely used languages around the globe, there is a lot of incentive to build linguistically diverse, voice-driven applications, in different languages and in diverse acoustic conditions. Although state of the art speech processing has achieved great performance for most widely used languages, little efforts were made for under-resourced languages, such as Romanian. Moreover, most of these systems are not focused in supporting specific voice recognition scenarios, such as assistive applications for elder or disabled people, or consider a triggered close talking voice interaction. This paper focuses in building a prototype system for Romanian language, to be used in distant speech recognition scenarios, for voice driven speech applications in intelligent homes or buildings. Previously acquired speech databases in Romanian language are used, recorded in real life conditions, by our research group. For a baseline comparison, an English recognition engine is also implemented.