26.02.2018

Use your Voice – and Smart Homes will “LISTEN”

The EU project “LISTEN” creates a robust, hands-free speech control interface for smart home systems. Best practice examples for the use of EML speech technology (part 1) – booth and live demos at the CCW fair in Berlin, February 27 – March 1, 2018

Wouldn´t it be convenient to control heating or cooling, lighting, and media anywhere in your home by just using your voice, without any device in your hand? For the elderly and people with disabilities, it would be even more than that: It can provide assistive control of important everyday activities and even save lives, in case of emergencies.

For smart homes: small, robust and locally installed

To develop such a novel smart home functionality, speech technology and signal processing experts from Germany, Greece, and Italy collaborate in the EU project "LISTEN" - "Hands-free Voice-enabled Interface to Web Applications for Smart Home Environments". They are designing a system enabling robust hands-free large-vocabulary voice-based access to Internet applications in smart homes. An important function is the use of a microphone array, which is a matchbox-size unit with 8 microphones. EML European Media Laboratory GmbH provide their speech recognition system and refine their tools for the project. For example, the speech recognition can also – in contrast to the current approach of large providers – be installed locally, which is a prerequisite for enforcing strong privacy rules.

Real time speech recognition in four languages

In the mid-term project review meeting the project partners demonstrated the system in four languages (English, German, Greek, and Italian). The EU project officer Alina Suhetzki experienced "LISTEN" by herself. Speaking her commands in English, she switched the lights on and off in a blink. "This was an impressive demonstration", she said. "A small and smart system that works in real-time with four languages and can also be adapted to further languages."

"LISTEN" is part of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) program, in the HORIZON 2020 framework. The other project partners are the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Cedat 85, Italy, and the Greek Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), who coordinates the project.

EML European Media Laboratory GmbH will present their speech technology from February 27 until March 1, 2018, at the CCW in Berlin, the international conference and trade show for customer communications services. The EML stand is located in Hall 2, C19.