The integrated software package, sold by both Lucent and Unisys to speech developers, combines Lucent`s state-of-the-art text-to-speech (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines, developed by Bell Labs, and Unisys` Natural Language Speech Assistant (NLSA) Speech Assistant Toolkit. The speech package will enable developers to dramatically reduce development time and will enable faster deployment of speech-based applications. The combined speech package will be targeted toward interactive voice response (IVR) and telephony platforms. Both companies will grant licensing and distribution rights to participating platform providers
Natural language speech systems replace touch-tone dial systems for applications such as phone banking by selecting key words and phrases that users speak in a natural voice, like "I want to open a new account." This capability simplifies the outside customer experience and dramatically expands the potential for new types of self-service applications equaling business cost savings in customer service time and resources.
"There is a growing market demand for natural speech applications. Unisys` NLSA tools simplify and accelerate speech application development and delivery without requiring specialized developer skills," said Joe Yaworski, vice president and general manager of Unisys Natural Language Understanding initiative. "The combination of our two leading speech technologies delivers a strong solution to those developing and deploying speech-based applications."
Lucent and Unisys will continue to collaborate to provide pioneering developments in the speech technology market. With this agreement, Lucent becomes the second market-leading ASR vendor to join Unisys` ASR Reseller Program.
"Lucent brings its industry-leading TTS and ASR engines to what we feel is a powerful joint development with Unisys," said Dan Furman, president of Lucent Speech Solutions. "Together, we will bring speech developers a new class of capabilities that will enable them to create more robust applications in a shorter time than ever before."
Lucent and Unisys Natural Language: How It Works
The development of speech applications has typically been a complex process requiring specialized skills. This is no longer the case. The typical application developer familiar with creating today`s touch-tone applications can now create simple to sophisticated speech applications. The developer uses one of the participating telephony platforms to create and control the functions normally performed through a touch-tone application.
With the Unisys-Lucent solution, developers can easily extend the user interface from the conventional 0 to 9 and *, # to an almost unlimited number of spoken choices. This is done through a simple-to-use set of development tools provided by the NL Speech Assistant toolkit. The NLSA toolkit generates the code required to allow the Lucent ASR to recognize what a person has said and turn it into text. The Unisys NL Speech Assistant then interprets that text into a specific response. For example, the user could tell the system "All right," "Yep," or "OK," all of which are interpreted into a "Yes." This process simplifies the creation and deployment of applications. It allows those creating applications that would previously have been touch-tone based to extend their applications with the almost unlimited possibilities offered by spoken input.
About The Lucent TTS Engine
The Lucent TTS engine provides an extremely natural and intelligible system, with unrestricted text input and options for both male and female voices as well as multilingual engines. The Lucent TTS Engine currently supports American English, German, and Mexican Spanish. The engine will soon handle French, Castilian Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. A full demonstration of these capabilities is available on the Web at http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts.
The Lucent TTS engine has logic to support accurate pronunciation of names, addresses, numbers, date and time, as well as context-sensitive abbreviation expansion. The TTS playback includes male and female voices at both 8 KHz and 11 KHz; and supports adjustment of speed, volume, pitch, and vocal tract size.
About The Lucent ASR Engine
The Lucent ASR engine supports speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition and run-time vocabulary change. Both sub-word (phonetic) models and whole-word models are supported. The engine can reject out-of-vocabulary utterances and offers a fully optimized SAPI-compliant grammar compiler. The speech recognition engine uses 32 MB of RAM and requires a 166 MHz Intel Pentium Pro processor. It is currently available in English and Spanish, with other languages planned.
About The NL Speech Assistant
The Natural Language (NL) Speech Assistant is an advanced speech application development tool set. The NL Speech Assistant provides application developers not only with the tools for speech application design and creation but also provides for application project management, development methodology and testing. To protect their applications from speech recognizer obsolescence, the NL Speech Assistant gives developers an open tool to design and develop spoken language applications across platforms and speech recognizers.
Unisys has a complete reseller program for the NL Speech Assistant, including platform integration, marketing and sales support, technical support and training. Visit www.marketplace.unisys.com/nlu for more information.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit our Web site at www.lucent.com.
Editors note
About Unisys
Unisys (NYSE:UIS) is more than 33,000 employees helping customers in 100 countries apply information technology to solve their business problems. Unisys solutions are based on a broad portfolio of global information services including systems integration, outsourcing, "repeatable" application solutions, consulting, network integration, remote network management, and multivendor maintenance and support, coupled with enterprise-class servers and associated middleware, software and storage. Repeatable solutions are focused on key vertical markets including financial services, transportation, telecommunications, government, publishing and other commercial markets. Headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, in the Greater Philadelphia area, Unisys 1997 annual revenue was $6.6 billion. Access the Unisys home page on the World Wide Web -- http://www.unisys.com -- for further information.
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