Speech Recognition in Orion "Phone Home" Device Control System

A South Australian speech recognition software center, i2Net, has developed a voice controlled home system.

Working with electrical companies, I2Net is now offering homeowners in South Australia the ability to "phone home." With voice commands, the Orion system can turn appliances on or off, take messages or perform a sequence of events.

David Brook, Invest South Australia VP North America said the Orion Electronic Partner (EP) software supports interaction with home devices in a natural way without complex sets of commands. "With the simple voice command of Orion, we're going out in 10 minutes. When we are gone, turn off all the lights the request is done," he said. i

2Net has spent the past three years researching and modeling the way people communicate with one another and how they interact with devices in the home. The iNet program is part of the Adelaide University's Commerce and Research Precinct. Brook said the extreme demands on speech recognition technologies required systems that had demonstrated scalability, a viable vision of future direction, capabilities for grammars, directed dialogues, constrained natural language dialogues, cellular/mobile, text-to-speech and speaker verification - all in relatively hostile environments.

"South Australia, a fast growing State in one of the world's most robust economies, has a reputation for R&D excellence and innovation," said Brook. "It has attracted the attention of some of the largest US tech firms such as EDS, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard as a safe, politically stable, affordable, high-quality and hi-tech site for expansion into the Asian markets," he said. "Known as the University City, Adelaide's graduate programs and Government sponsored centers of excellence have attracted some of the leading technology minds from around the country and overseas."