Spoken Language Processing in the Framework of Human-Machine Communication at LIMSI

The paper provides an overview of the research conducted at LIMSI in the field of speech processing, but also in the related areas of Human-Machine Communication, including Natural Language Processing, Non Verbal and Multimodal Communication. Also presented are the commercial applications of some of the research projects. When applicable, the discussion is placed in the framework of international collaborations. I N T R O D U C T I O N The initial work on Text-to-Speech synthesis and WordBased recognition resulted in the development of software and hardware (including an Asic) systems which have since been marketed, and used in different applications such as cockpit design. Some of the problems encountered in their practical use are discussed. The development of a speaker verification system presently under test field trials is also presented. Our speech research program is now oriented along two main axes: Voice Dictation and Spoken Dialog. The successive steps of the voice dictation project are presented, and the difficulties specific to the French language in this task are highlighted. For the dialog project, the integration of linguistic and pragmatic information with continuous speech recognition in the context of air controller training is described. While this paper focuses on our speech processing projects, other efforts in related areas, such as character recognition and computer vision with algorithms derived from those developed for speech processing are mentioned. Speech processing is placed in the general framework of Human-Machine Communication. This is reflected in the structure of the laboratory, by the relationship of the Speech Communication group with the two other components of the Human-Machine Communication department: the Language ~ Cognition and NonVerbal Communication groups. When applicable, the projects of the laboratory are situated in the general context of European/international cooperative actions. Perspectives on the directions of research are given.