Newsgroups: comp.speech
Path: pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!warwick!uknet!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!sdd.hp.com!portal!case2!wynton!joshua
From: joshua@mtv.ten.com (Joshua Bleier)
Subject: Re: Logistics of demonstrating Speech applic
Message-ID: <1994Feb11.195927.2533@mtv.ten.com>
Sender: news@mtv.ten.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: wynton
Reply-To: joshua@mtv.ten.com
Organization: Tencor Instruments
References: <CKyvHH.40F@lut.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 19:59:27 GMT
Lines: 52

In article 40F@lut.ac.uk, S.Datta@lut.ac.uk () writes:
> In article <1994Feb8.193858.1059@sol.cs.wmich.edu> parens@sol.cs.wmich.edu
>(Put Your Name Here) writes:
> >Well congratulate me, I just gave my first demo of a speech navigated
> >application.  The application showed well, but there's a problem,
> >because how do you *talk* about the system without the system responding
> >to your sales pitch.  
> >
> >In other words, what is the best microphone gear to use for this type of
> >thing.  I assume some sort of uni-directional microphone head piece that
> >is switch activated, so you can talk to the people, then talk to the 
> >system.  
> >
> >Any wisdom is this area?
> >.
> >
> 
> I remember implementing a system some twenty years back for interrogating 
> a Relational Database by Voice. The input was in the form of isolated 
> words, but using the telephone handset as the transducer. I encountered 
> a similar problem to the one you are referring. The solution I opted for 
> was to introduce two control words STOP and GO. Whenever the system heard 
> the word STOP it suspended all activities except to listen continually 
> for the word GO for reactivation. I made sure that these control words 
> needed to be uttered fairly distinctly for the system to perform 
> satisfactorily.
> 

Apple handled this situation similarly with their AV systems. You address
the computer by some name (default is "computer", but you can change it
to anything you like) when requesting it to perform an operation. There
really isn't any need to suspend operation with a keyword.

The computer will not respond unless a request is preceeded by it's ID
(and often, it won't respond even then!! :-)

So for example, you would chat with the your audience (without *ever* using
the word "computer" ;-) for a while, then, when you wanted it to, say, open the 
file called "Bitchen Interface", you'd say

"Computer, open file bitchen interface"

and the system would then put the file "Bitchen Interface" in the trash
and launch the "apple puzzle" game... Apple still has some bugs to work 
out. :-)


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joshua Bleier                                      Internet: joshua@mtv.ten.com
Software Project Lead                                 Voice:     (415) 988-4461
Tencor Instruments                                      FAX:     (415) 969-6371
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