Prototype phone boosts speech recognition quality

Motorola and speech recognition software maker SpeechWorks International have developed a prototype phone they say will help computers better decipher wireless signals for clearer transmissions.

Mobile speech recognition technology generally requires that a speaker's voice be transmitted through a wireless network to a stationary computer for processing.

When a mobile phone user is in a bad spot in a network, say, in a building or on the edge of a service provider's coverage area, some voice fidelity is lost.. A computer trying to perform voice recognition processing on a garbled transmission would be more likely to fail. The limitations of wireless phone network signal transmissions compound the problem. A voice call cannot use the same redundant transmissions meant to guarantee Internet packet delivery.

Motorola and SpeechWorks' prototype is meant to attack the signal problem at the source. The processor cleans up the voice signal, performing the digital equivalent of the signal. A server running SpeechWorks software can process the clarified signal more easily.

The experimental phone uses a field-force automation application, letting a traveling sales representative check accounts by speaking into a handheld device.

The phone could hit the market in 12 to 18 months, the companies say.

Chidi is a correspondent with the IDG News Service's Boston bureau.