I am trying to research available voice recognition engines and SDK for developing a Windows CE voice enabled application. I've run across Nuance, but don't see much of anything else. I would prefer a .Net SDK if possible, but I imagine most would be C/C++. I appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.
A:
Try looking into Microsoft's Speech API, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms897381.aspx
I believe it runs on CE devices.
Crowe T. Robot
2009-12-07 20:08:58
From what I understand, the SAPI is available on CE devices, but the actual speech recognition engine is not. It must either be developed or purchased from a 3rd party.
Dustin
2009-12-07 20:23:35
Ah, sorry bout that. I think you're right, it says they supply the interfaces required, but you may have to develop the engine yourself.Disregard this then :)
Crowe T. Robot
2009-12-07 20:29:02
+1
A:
Nuance has basically bought everyone up. They rule the speech market, I am afraid...
There are a few other companies that deal in the technology, but I don't know how well they do in the embedded market. There is telisma and Loquendo, both which have strong non-English presences (and their English isn't too bad either).
Then there is still IBM. They have ViaVoice Embedded.
One of the big things the industry is waiting for is to see what comes out of Microsoft's acquisition of TellMe, but I think the embedded market they might stay away from instead of pushing the processing to the "cloud", which is where TellMe has been for a long time.
Kitson
2009-12-14 21:35:59
We've decided to try an SDK from Vangard Voice Systems that allows you to hook Nuance's voice recognition engine into .Net applications. It seems to be working well so far, but we will really put it to the test once we move it to the true work environment with much more ambient noise. The way they have developed their SDK to "hook" into an existing application makes it a bit quirky. It's one of those things where it makes it really easy to do simple things but in turn makes it that much harder to create a more powerful, elegant solution.
Dustin
2010-03-04 15:11:16
+1
A:
I work with IVR applications; in addition to Nuance we're currently evaluating Microsoft, IBM, and Lumenvox.
The voice recognition applications included on most cell phones are designed to match voice input to a previously spoken phrase, such as assigning the phrase "Joe" to an address book entry and having your phone dial that address book entry when you say "Joe". The more powerful speech recognition engines try to decipher freeform speech by breaking a phrase down into phonemes, and then matching against an acoustic repository to try to figure out what was actually said. A full blown speech recognition engine requires a fair amount of CPU horsepower; to do anything complex with voice recognition on a mobile device, you'll probably need to send data from the device to a server for processing.
Jeremy Seghi
2009-12-15 01:14:42
A:
There is also the open source project CMU Sphinx . They have a variant called PocketSphinx that has been targeted for portable devices.
Taneli Waltari
2009-12-16 12:41:00
A:
As stated in one of my comments above, we are trying a voice recognition .Net SDK from Vangard Voice Systems. It uses Nuance's Vocon3200 voice recognition engine which is well respected and seems to work well in early testing. We're using a cheap microphone right now and have some issues with outside noise. Hopefully that will be resolved with noise-cancelling headsets. The software model is a bit lacking in that it basically hooks into an existing non-voice application. There are some limitations due to this fact and there is a limited API accessible by the developer. Any time you try to oversimplify something like this, you make crafting a powerful solution much more difficult. With that being said, we really couldn't find any competing product that serves our needs of a .Net SDK for voice enablement of mobile applications. They currently have a nice little niche carved out.
I would have preferred to go with Nuance's C++ SDK (for which another company has written .Net wrappers), but the Nuance business model assumes we're developing a product for resale and has some significant royalties involved. A real barrier for a company that wants to develop internal applications.
Dustin
2010-03-04 16:01:35