Applied Speech Information Systems 2/008 NRDP Project

1. Applied Speech InformationSystems 2/008 NRDP Project Project coordinator: Prof. Géza Gordos (gordos@ttt.bme.hu) Members of the consortium: • Budapest University of Technology and Economics,Department of Telecommunications and Telematics (BUTE) • Pázmány P. Catholic University (PPCU) • Westel Mobile Telecommunications Company (WMT) • AITIA Inc. (AITIA) • MorphoLogic Ltd. (ML) Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

2. General objectives • Integration of genericinfocommunication technologies • Extension of complementary knowledge bases • 2 university research labs • 2 ICT SME companies • 1 telecommunication corporation • Instead of expensive and often poor quality adaptation of technologies developed for the English language, the characteristics of the Hungarian language are taken into account • Strengthening international competitive position • Assistance in integration of handicapped people Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

3. Technical objectives • The innovative goal of the project: • research, development and demonstration of generic technologies integrated into practical services • New generic technologies: • speaker independent, open dictionary Hungarian speech recognizer for telephone channel, based on speech databases and speech analysis (text based dictionary generation) • speech synthesizer with variable size acoustic database units and general Hungarian name and address reader • intelligent dialogue system description and management framework system applying speech interfaces • integrating the above technologies for intelligent telecommunication information retrieval systems Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

4. Technical objectives and results Speech recognition (BUTE – AITIA) • Goal: Development of multi-channel speaker independent speech recognition engine for telephone services Completed subtasks • speech database generation (600 speakers x 5 minutes, noisy) • development of an automatic segmentation method • optimization of the reliability and resource requirements of the recognition algorithm (PC: 20 channels, DSP: 180 channels front-end) • training of phone models (monophone, diphone, triphone) • automatic phonetic transcription for dictionary generation Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

5. Technical objectives and results Speech synthesis (BUTE) • Goal: Development of • improved high quality text-to-speech framework • generic name and address reader for Hungarian • application(s) to special database access Completed subtasks • processing of 3+2 million name and address records • manual classification of 300.000 records • automatic classifier of Hungarian proper/company names and addresses • new name and address reading dialogue strategies • detailed reading (syllabification and spelling) algorithms • new TTS + name and address reading system Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

6. Technical objectives and results Dialogue system (AITIA) • Goal: Development of an intelligent framework and dialogue system for speech recognition based call center and voice portal applications Completedsubtasks: • speech recognition based dialogue management system • development of the dialogue description structure • implementation of the dialogue editor • implementation of the dialogue manager Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

7. Research Objectives and ResultsIndividual voice features (PPCU) • Goal: Analysis and modification of individual speech feature characteristics Completed subtasks • analysis of speaker voice timbre and features • transplantation of source speaker's features into target speaker's voice Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

8. Research Objectives and ResultsLanguage model (ML) • Goal: Study and report on integration of linguistic language models into speech controlled applications Completed subtasks • analysis of application of possibilities for feedback of linguistic analysis in speech recognition • analysis of possibilities of linguistic support for increasing the recognition rate of the most probable character string Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

9. Results of integrationVoxenterTM voice portal • Voxenter is connecting to and extending the functionality of any PBX or call center • Flexible agent-based real-time information service management and database connectivity • Unique and standards-based dialogue editor supporting XML and VXML • Web/Java based remote administration console • It can be connected to analogue, ISDN (BRI, PRI), and VoIP telephone interfaces • AITIA Inc. and DTT-BUTE use the system since December 2002 (call +36 1 382-7580) • IT 2003 Hungary conference and exhibition award Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

10. Voice portal development speech databases phone models language models training speech recognition engine synthesis units synthesis rules dialogue system telephone interface speech synthesizer speech characteristics analysis and modification dialogue manager database dialogue editor operator framework system dialogue description at development: Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

11. Results of integrationSpeech enabled call center Integration of speech recognition and speech synthesis systems with AVAYA technology and development of demo applications for Westel Inc. • Billing information service(integrating speech recognition and number and date reader) • Telephone number based reverse directory assistance (integrating name and address reader) Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

12. Avaya call center integration phone models language models NLSR protocol interface speech recognition engine AVAYA call center Westel intranet ProfiVox speech synthesizer Proxy TTS protocol interface synthesis units synthesis rules Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

13. Project exploitation Research, education • new scientific results, strengthening of graduate and PhD schools • growing international collaboration potential • feedback into the education Industry • opening new market possibilities • integrating new languages (industrial demand for other central-european languages TTS, ASR) • further products and integrations (100 free ProfiVox TTS licences for blind people, Digitania, T-Systems RIC, ...) Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)

14. Thanks for your attention! Applied Speech Information Systems (Contact: gordos@ttt.bme.hu)