Voice recognition system implementation and laboratory exercise

Abstract

Efficient and accurate data collection is vital to the successful management of modern businesses, providing crucial information for decision making. Automatic data collection systems reduce the amount of paperwork, time, and labor needed and the complexity of generating and using this information. Voice recognition systems are one of the newest systems being utilized for automatic data collection. This method uses voice interfacing, offering the possibility of interacting with the humans most natural and best-developed communication skill- speech.

It will be important for industrial engineers to understand how this newer technology can assist in making an operation more efficient. This project was conceived to meet this goal. Steps to completing this project included doing a literature survey on voice recognition, becoming familiar with the voice recognition equipment in the Automatic Data Collection Systems Laboratory at Virginia Tech, setting up the network, and then designing the lab activities for using the equipment.

The main emphasis of this project was the design of the lab activities. These labs provide students with practical hands on experience in using voice recognition systems and gives them a basic understanding of its theory and applications. The set of four laboratory activities includes exercises on voice training, text to speech synthesis, improving the accuracy of voice systems, and using a voice system in conjunction with another automatic data collection device (a bar-code wand).