Speech recognition -: state of the art, applications, and future prospects

Automatic speech recognition and understanding has been subject to intensive research for several decades. A few years ago, the first commercial applications for the technology resulting from these efforts began to emerge. It is now obvious that speech recognition technology will soon play an important role in everyday life and also in business. In this paper, we outline the basic principles of speech recognition technology and analyze its potentials and also its limitations. We discuss current and possible future applications, ranging from simple command control systems and dictation systems to natural language dialogue and translation systems.