Military Applications of Speech Understanding Systems

Investigates the potential applications in military systems of speech understanding and recognition by computers, identifies those applications which appear to provide operational benefits over the current, manual man-computer interfaces, or which may lead to entirely new operational capabilities. The report also discusses the general military environment which affects such applications, and contrasts the military and civilian aspects of man-computer tasks, interfaces, and operating conditions. Promising applications include avionics equipment control, field data entry, cooperative man-computer tasks in tactical systems, and database management in tactical and administrative systems. A set of advanced applications, such as spoken language translation, biomedical monitoring, and speech-operated writing machines are also discussed. The report concludes with suggestions for the selection of applications areas for further research, and for the development of a methodology for transferring speech understanding and recognition technology into operational systems.