Advanced Algorithms and Architectures for Speech Understanding e-bog

This book is intended to give an overview of the major results achieved in the field of natural speech understanding inside ESPRIT Project P. 26, "e;Advanced Algorithms and Architectures for Speech and Image Processing"e;. The project began as a Pilot Project in the early stage of Phase 1 of the ESPRIT Program launched by the Commission of the European Communities. After one year, in the light of the preliminary results that were obtained, it was confirmed for its 5-year duration. Even though the activities were carried out for both speech and image understand- ing we preferred to focus the treatment of the book on the first area which crystallized mainly around the CSELT team, with the valuable cooperation of AEG, Thomson-CSF, and Politecnico di Torino. Due to the work of the five years of the project, the Consortium was able to develop an actual and complete understanding system that goes from a continuously spoken natural language sentence to its meaning and the consequent access to a database. When we started in 1983 we had some expertise in small-vocabulary syntax-driven connected-word speech recognition using Hidden Markov Models, in written natural lan- guage understanding, and in hardware design mainly based upon bit-slice microprocessors.