Aculab Launches its First Speaker Verification Software

MILTON KEYNES, UK - Speech processing specialist Aculab is entering the biometrics arena with the launch of its own speaker verification and identification (SVI) software at SpeechTEK 2002. Designed for use in telephony applications, the new software forms a component part of Aculab's new connected word recognition (CWR) 3.0 package, which is available under a cost free licence when used with the company's Prosody digital signal processor (DSP) resource card. Aimed at systems integrators and developers, the new SVI software uses statistical data to confirm a caller's identity by their unique voiceprint. Because Aculab's SVI is built on existing speech recognition technology, the two can run simultaneously. Ultimately, this means that applications can verify the caller based on their voice and for an even more secure verification, a piece of personal knowledge can be included in a recognition process. Using biometrics - or physical characteristics - of the human voice to verify that individuals are indeed 'who they say they are', Aculab's latest software offers high-density SVI that can run in parallel with its range of DSP resources. These include record, playback, echo cancellation and dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) detection to produce high quality versatile applications with low 'per channel' costs. Working in conjunction with other speech processing technologies such as text-to-speech (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) further enhances self-service applications. Not only can they process a caller's request and retrieve the right information, they can also verify the caller's ID. Aculab's sales and marketing director, Chris Gravett, believes that the new SVI technology will be widely adopted by the financial services sector and government as well as by companies that need to give employees secure access to intranets, extranets and corporate applications. "In the telecoms arena, it can be used to reduce fraud associated with calling cards," he says. "For enterprises, the real advantage of SVI is the security issue that it overcomes. It presents a huge cost saving for companies who have to spend money on sourcing lost PIN numbers and passwords."