In this article, you’ll learn what speech technology is, real-world applications, future of speech technology and what does this technology do.
What is Speech technology?
Speech technology is the technology of a new era where it is designed to respond to the human voice. In layman’s terms, voice recognition is involved in speech technology, which has tons of usage in modern times, not just helping people with disabilities and making a person’s life easier. Speech technology recognizes, analyses, and interprets a person’s speech to understand the user’s requirement to fulfill it.
What does speech recognition technology do?
The fundamentals used in speech recognition involve converting verbally spoken words into texts as input for command and then running algorithms on the machine to execute the command and provide the desired result to the user. Multiple components and algorithms are used in this specific technology to meet the results successfully.
A microphone is used to record or capture the verbal command of a user. It is then sent to the CPU for further steps where algorithms applied on the audio file convert those audio commands into texts via binary language for the machine to understand and then run the command to display the result demanded by the user.
The computer or machine uses software to do so. The verbal command goes through a few steps before turning into the desired result, which involves analyzing the audio and recognizing the command’s language. Then, the verbal command is broken into small parts for the computer to understand it effortlessly.
After this, the command is converted into binary language so the machine can understand the command since machines only understand binary language. The message or command is matched with the results to provide the most optimal result to the user’s demand.
Machines usually follow two types of models to execute such a complex process:
1. Acoustic models
In this model, a specific relationship is set between audio signals and linguistic units of speech.
2. Language models
In this model, sounds are compared with sequences of words to distinguish between the words that sound similar.
Real-life Applications of speech technology
72% of online users prefer to use voice search instead of typing, according to PWC. Besides disability assistance, speech recognition technology has many applications of its own, which have turned this technology into a revolutionizing change for humankind.
1. Education sector
Speech recognition technology has been prominently used in the education sector for a while now. Specialized speech recognition technology software helps users improve their verbal skills in any language. The technology records the user’s speech in a language and compares their pronunciation with the database of the actual pronunciation of the language. It then provides recommendations to the user to improve their verbal speaking in a language further.
2. Customer support
Speech recognition technology uses AI these days as automated voice assistants that solve customers’ queries by listening to them and providing solutions after a quick run on the algorithm through the database.
3. Communication
Hands-free is a handy feature in the system these days. It uses speech recognition technology to listen to the user’s commands and fulfill them accordingly. This is very useful in communication where a person can command the device via speech technology to make a call to the desired contact.
Any such activity where you can cut, hold or add more calls with messaging using a hands-free feature in communication devices these days.
4. Smartphone feature
Voice assistant is a popular feature in smartphones these days, where speech recognition technology makes a person’s life very easy. It helps them cope with the fast pace of the modern lifestyle where you can get your smartphone to do anything by just calling out the command you want to run.
Voice assistants can integrate with household devices like smart bulbs, washing machines, and many devices like these to complete basic tasks like switching bulbs off by just calling out the command.
5. Emotional recognition
Alongside speech recognition technology, an integrated technology named emotional recognition helps a company in sales strategy by listening to the user’s view on the product while also analyzing the sentiments of a person towards the product to judge the true feelings of customers towards the product.
6. Health industry
Doctors’ speech recognition technology is vitally used in the health industry to make their tasks easier and focus on significant healthcare since voice recognition software helps them record notes as texts through verbal speech.
Future of speech recognition
Speech recognition is a developing and evolving technology of a new era that moves a person’s reliability on the machine to companionship with the machine. 27% of the online global population use voice search on their mobile, according to Google.
Sixty years of development have to ripen into a successful growth which is vitally visible as voice assistance is available in standard household devices, smart speakers like Alexa, Siri and Google Home. The use of voice search will keep increasing with time.
Explore Other Technology Terms