Association News
NfP Techno: Real-Time Continuous Speech Recognition
February 21, 2017 - Association News
Real-Time Continuous Speech Recognition
Speechmatics, a Cambridge-based speech technology company, has launched a real-time, fully embeddable, continuous speech recognition system. It claims levels of accuracy and speed usually only found on cloud-based services, and in many languages.
The technology will help businesses overcome fundamental speech recognition challenges associated with existing large vocabulary, continuous systems. Typically, the faster the system, the lower the accuracy. Speech recognition technology has been limited to post-processing after an interaction, or to the use of short phrases. It was near impossible for large, continuous systems to process fast, accurate transcriptions at scale and over long time-periods.
Speechmatics continuous real-time system has a large 250,000-word vocabulary for each language, optimised for speed and accuracy when deployed on any device. This novel application of RNN’s (a form of deep neural network) allows for it to scale up for any application, for any use case, in any language, from running on a mobile phone to large server farms.
With users becoming increasingly anxious about data security, the system enables the data to be held and processed by the user, running natively on a device, rather than by the cloud. The offline capability takes it one step closer to using speech recognition technology anywhere, at any time, by anyone.
Having already successfully created several speech-tech companies, this technology builds on Dr Tony Robinson’s 30 years of experience in developing speech technologies and writing multiple decoders. The continuous real-time speech recognition system, opens up a number of use-cases in multiple markets; from instant actionable intelligence in call centres or compliance settings to live sub-titling; from offline email dictation on mobile phones; or extending home entertainments from voice commands to true voice interaction.
Dr Hermann Hauser, of investors Amadeus Capital Partners, says, “We are seeing a shift in the tech industry as we move away from touchpad technology towards speech as the main form of communication. This shift is creating a need for businesses to gain immediate, actionable intelligence through highly accurate speech recognition technology, in many languages. There is strong demand in the market for Speechmatics, as it will allow businesses that work on an international scale to not only ensure speech is transcribed correctly, but also to improve everyday user experiences.”