Speech-as-data technologies for personal information devices

摘要

For small, portable devices, speech input has the advantages of low-cost and small hardware, can be used on the move or whilst the eyes & hands are busy, and is natural and quick. Rather than rely on imperfect speech recognition we propose that information entered as speech is kept as speech and suitable tools are provided to allow quick and easy access to the speech-as-data records. This paper summarises our work on the technologies needed for these tools - for organising, browsing, searching and compressing the stored speech. These technologies go a long way towards giving stored speech the characteristics of text without the associated input problems.