Re: Cobol books & experiences



"Judson McClendon" <judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:U98if.10315$KP1.3589@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Back in the 80's I was asked to look into voice recognition for the Dental
> Health section of the local Health Department. They wanted the dentists to
> speak the results of dental exams (a series of number and letter codes)
> into a PC based dental statistics system I had written for them. This
> would have freed up the dental technicians who were keying the data in as
> the dentist worked, permitting them to serve more patients with the same
> staff. We looked at several PC based systems up to about $1,200, but they
> simply were not up to the task. They were *very* picky. You could 'train'
> the software to recognize one person's voice, which took from 30-90
> minutes, and it would work fairly well for that one person. But the next
> day, or after lunch, or even after a glass of water, it wouldn't work
> correctly. And we only needed it to recognize about 8-10 letters, the
> numeric digits 0-9, and about five command words.

I saw a demo in Las Vesgas a few years back of a VR system from a company
called Phoenix Systems. It didn't need training, and could even cope with
different voices and, to some extent, accents. (It was running on a Sun
system and took all available resources... I haven't heard of them since so
I don't know what happened. Dragon is pretty good (once you've trained it).
I think if you evaluated a modern system, Judson, you would be agreeably
surprised at the progress made in the last 20 years. They are still not
perfect, but each release is better than the last and, as processor power
increases, these CPU intensive tasks become more viable. I can see the
general public going for ""Close the pod bay door Hal" or "Prepare the
lounge for seduction, please, Hal. (Lights dim, appropriate music starts,
room becomes a few degrees warmer... etc.)... If we've seen it in the
movies, we want it. Life emulates art. :-)

Pete.



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