Keynote Lecture
Speech man-machine communication
Abstract
For most people speech is the most natural and most comfortable method of communication. In case of system control speech communication offers free-hand control fully effective also in darkness, easy to learn and natural in use. Using speech signal as an information carrier between man and machines we can also use all devices designed for speech communication between people (e.g. phones, both stationary and mobile), which can be used as the cheapest and easiest form of remote control. Moreover in case of emergency the vocal reaction of almost every human being can be much faster and more precise than any other communication and steering manipulation form.Speech communications can be performed in two directions. First and easier is vocal output coming from the machines to the man. Everybody knows such solutions used, among others, in popular car GPS devices. Speech generation by the machines and speech synthesis for many purposes is now fully developed technology and scientific research in this area can be found as exhausted.
In contrary to this situation the opposite direction communications, e.g. automatic recognition of the speech by the machines . is much more complicated and not fully solved until now from both scientific and practical point of view. At the same time automatic speech recognition is needed for many purposes: for vocal communication with many devices, for speech input during entering many kind of data to many kinds of information systems, for speech control of robots and other automatic systems, for speech interactions between user and many automatic service centers e.g. phone-banking etc.
Moreover good working solutions, existing for particular languages (English, Japanese, German) cannot be easy adapted for other languages, especially Slavish ones, because of many phonetic and linguistic differences. We can assure that good system for speech communication between man and machines, which can accept and use Polish language must be discovered and developed near the Vistula River!
In the presentation selected problems originated by the Polish speech recognition systems will be presented and discussed. For some of them we have now good solutions, but definitely not for all. Therefore Polish speech recognition problem is worth intensive scientific and engineer research and this keynote speech is dedicated to initiating such research.
Brief biography of the Speaker
Professor Ryszard Tadeusiewicz studied at the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow (Poland) from which he graduated (with honors) in 1971. Additionally, after receiving his degree in Automatic Control Engineering, he studied at the Faculty of Medicine at the Medical Academy in Krakow, as well as undertook studies in the field of mathematical and computer methods in economics. Since April 1971 he has done research in the areas of bio-cybernetics, automatic control engineering, and computer science. In 1975 he was awarded the Ph.D. degree, and in 1981 the degree of Doctor of Sciences (habilitation). In 1986 he became Professor and in 1991 the Full Professor at the AGH University of Science and Technology. He obtained 9 Honorary Doctor awards from Polish and foreign Universities.He has written and published over 600 scientific papers, which were published in prestigious Polish and foreign scientific journals as well as numerous conference presentations - both national and international. Prof. Tadeusiewicz also wrote over 70 scientific monographs and books, among them are highly popular textbooks (which had many reprints). He was supervisor of 54 doctoral thesis and reviewer of more than 200 doctoral thesis. In 2003 all Polish scientists elected him to be President of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society - Polish Chapter.
In 1996, in universal and secret elections he was elected the Vice-Rector for Science of the AGH University of Science and Technology, and in January 1998 its Rector. He was re-elected 1999 for the term 1999 - 2002 and again 2002 for the term 2002-2005. In February 1998 Prof. Tadeusiewicz was elected the Corresponding Member of Polish Academy of Sciences and Arts (PAU), in February 2000 he become Foreigner Member of Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and in May 2002 he was elected for the grade Corresponding Member of Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN).