Distributed Listening: A Parallel Processing Approach to Automatic Speech Recognition

While speech recognition systems have come a long way in the last thirty years, there is still room for improvement. Although readily available, these systems are sometimes inaccurate and insufficient. The research presented here outlines a technique called Distributed Listening which demonstrates noticeable improvements to existing speech recognition methods. The Distributed Listening architecture introduces the idea of multiple, parallel, yet physically separate automatic speech recognizers called listeners. Distributed Listening also uses a piece of middleware called an interpreter. The interpreter resolves multiple interpretations using the Phrase Resolution Algorithm (PRA). These efforts work together to increase the accuracy of the transcription of spoken utterances.