Principal Investigator James Glass
Co-investigator Stephanie Seneff
Project Website http://groups.csail.mit.edu/sls//sls-orange-nospec.html
The goal in the Spoken Language Systems Group is both simple and ambitious -- create technology that makes it possible for everyone in the world to interact with computers via natural spoken language.Conversational interfaces will enable us to converse with machines in much the same way that we communication with one another and will play a fundamental role in facilitating the move toward an information-based society
Since its formation in 1989, the SLS group has focused its research on the creation of technology that enables humans to interact with computers using natural spoken language. In pursuit of this goal SLS students and researchers are actively engaged in a number of research projects. Some of the current projects are:
(*) Conversational Human/Computer Interaction(*) Multimodal Processing and Interaction(*) Multilingual Interaction(*) Speech and Language Processing of Media(*) Second Language Acquisition(*) Speech and pen-based interaction on the web(*) Spoken interaction on small handheld devices(*) Telephony interaction(*) Vehicle-based interaction
Core Technology Development
To support its research on spoken language systems for human/computer interaction, the SLS group has developed its own suite of core speech technologies. These technologies include:
(*) speech recognition (SUMMIT)(*) natural language understanding (TINA)(*) dialogue modeling(*) language generation (GENESIS)(*) speech synthesis (ENVOICE)
The core speech technologies can be integrated to create conversational systems using the GALAXY architecture for conversational speech systems. The creation of GALAXY has enabled developers to rapidly create conversational systems for a wide variety of applications.
Application Development
To demonstrate the capabilities of the technologies they have developed, the SLS group has developed a wide variety of spoken language applications. These applications include:
(*) A telephone-based weather information system called JUPITER.(*) A telephone-based airline flight planning system called MERCURY.(*) A web-based lecture browser that allows users to search spoken terms from selected MIT OpenCourseWare and MITWorld videos .(*) A customizable web-based game called WordWar that allows students to practice speaking their Mandarin vocabulary.