Voice Processing Corporation Speech Recognition Product Line

• Platform: Unknown.
• Description: Voice Processing Corporation (VPC) supplies automated speech recognition systems. VPC's products are used in the telecommunications, cellular and personal computer markets to enable computers to understand human speech. The company's VPro product line is sold to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), value added resellers (VARs), system integrators and application developers. VPC's speech recognition systems are currently used in applications such as voice mail, voice activated dialing, interactive voice response, and command and control of personal computers.

  The following are descriptions of the Voice Processing Corporation's VPro Product Line: VProContinuous, VPro/XD, VPro/RT, VProCel, VProSpeller, VProPRL, VPro hardware platforms, and the application Osprey.

  More information is available on these products at the VPC WWW site: http://www.vpro.com/

• VProContinuous(TM) is a speaker-independent, continuous digit recognizer. It recognizes digit strings spoken in a continuous manner, by any caller, without unnatural beeps or pauses. VProContinuous uses out-of-vocabulary rejection and word spotting technologies to reject extraneous words and phrases often spoken by callers. The VProContinuous vocabulary consists of the words "zero" through "nine," "yes," "no," and "oh." The product is language-independent. American English, Australian English, Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Castilian Spanish, French, German, Italian, Mexican Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss German and U.K. English versions are available.
• VPro/XD(TM) is a discrete or multiword speech recognizer for extra-demanding applications and/or vocabularies. This robust discrete product recognizes isolated discrete utterances (words or very short phrases). VPro/XD utilizes proprietary out-of-vocabulary rejection and word-spotting technologies. VPro/XD is speaker-independent and includes Talkover capability allowing speech-interrupt over prompts. Pre-trained vocabulary libraries are available in American English, Australian English, Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Castilian Spanish, Central American Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Mexican Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss German and UK English. Pre-trained vocabularies consisting of voice mail words, voice dialing words, call control words, banking, and emergency words are available in American English (both cellular and land-line).
• VPro/RT(TM) is a discrete speech recognizer for rapid training of vocabularies in the field. This robust discrete product recognizes isolated discrete utterances. Application designers and end-users define the vocabulary of their choice and train the system in real-time either prior to system start-up, or adapting on-the-fly while the system is running live. Vocabularies can be subset, and applications involving thousands of words can be developed quickly. VPro/RT, which also supports Talkover, is suited to speaker-dependent recognition tasks, such as the personal directory of names in a voice-activated dailing application. VPro/RT is also good for applications that require speaker-independent vocabularies to be developed quickly in the field or those that require many vocabularies. VPro/RT can also be used as a tool for quick prototyping of applications.
• VProCel consists of speaker-independent VProContinuous, VPro/XD and speaker-dependent VPro/RT specifically tuned for the cellular environment. The speaker-dependent discrete feature of VProCel allows for a user-defined 20-word personal directory, with a one-pass enrollment whereby users need only speak their chosen commands once. In addition, cellular-ready VPro/XD vocabularies consisting of voice-activated dialing command words are also available. VProCel is suited to voice-activated dialing applications using either digit strings or a listing of words in a personal directory.
• VProSpeller is a recognizer that can determine which name or word is being spelled by a caller. Users may spell a string of letters (up to 32 letters) in an uninterrupted manner (without prompts or beeps between each letter). VProSpeller can recognize confusable letters by conducting an automated search of a database of words maintained by the application for the best candidates to match.
• VProPRL Designed for customers who wish to enable VPC speech recognition technologies on platforms other than those supported by VPro hardware, the VProPRL is a portable recognizer library of VProContinuous, VPro/XD and VPro/RT, which can be embedded into a wide variety of hardware platforms. It consists of a library of object modules which can be linked with a user application or task.
• VPro Hardware Platforms: VPro-42, VPro-84, VPro-88 : The VPro platforms are ISA compliant PC/AT boards. Each supports four to eight Virtual Speech Processors (VSPs). Each VSP, depending on load factors, can handle multiple telephone lines. Application and host computers communicate with each of the VSPs as separate autonomous units. VPro platforms use Texas Instruments TMS320C31 microprocessors which provide up to 133 MFLOPS of compute power. The platforms can have up to 8 megabytes of memory shared among all processors. In addition, each processor has 512K bytes of local memory. Both the PEB and MVIP PCM audio buses are supported by all VPro platforms.
• Osprey is a call management software application that performs the kinds of telephone related activities typically done by a personal assistant, such as answering the phone, screening callers, routing calls, and taking and delivering messages. It is an automated phone attendant.
• Price and availability: Contact Voice Processing Corporation
• Contact: Kelli V. Smith
  Voice Processing Corporation
  1 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, 02142 USA
  Ph: (617)494-0100 Fax: (617)494-4970
  e-mail: KSmith@vpro.com
  WWW: http://www.vpro.com/

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