By DemocracyRules
h/t StratgeyPage.com
The new U.S. F-35 fighter will be equipped with a new speech recognition system. This is the first time an American aircraft will use such a system...
With this voice recognition, many tasks that previously required a button push, can now be executed with a spoken command... Typical tasks for spoken commands and electronic ears are requests for information on aircraft condition or changing the status of a sensor or weapon system (which can be presented on the see-through computer display built into the visors of many pilot helmets). The spoken commands save the pilot the time required to press a button or flip a switch, or glance sideways to view a display.
What is developing here is the appearance of, in effect, computerized co-pilots.
Twenty years ago I worked on a cockpit speech recognition system. Speech recognition at that time had to cope with some complications. Airflow around the canopy creates a lot of noise, but this noise is attenuated by the air mask wherein the microphone was located. However, the microphone (back then) was located way too close to the regulator. This caused a worse regulator noise problem. Finally, the presence of the air mask on the pilot's face changes the spectrum of his voice. He has to talk against back-pressure. And his voice hits the inside of the air mask and is changed by that, too.
Unless the tech has gotten a lot better, cockpit voice systems will use a constrained vocabulary and grammar. The pilot's discourse will be restricted to the business of flying the plane, managing displays, and setting up modes of attack. Also, pilots should be able to train the system to respond to the peculiarities of their own voices.
The coolest thing I ever saw was the work on "evoked potentials" that was Firefox stuff (not the browser, the Clint Eastwood movie). I don't know if it ever came to anything. The movie was fun, but the bit about thinking in Russian was exceptionally bad bad science-wise.
Posted by: Steve Poling | October 10, 2008 at 12:32 AM