Japanese firm releases speech conversion technology for mobile

Nippon Electric Company (NEC) recently announced that it has developed a CPU for mobile that can convert speech into written words instantaneously. The user of a handset with this kind of CPU can read the message converted into written words on the screen even if he failed to answer the call.

Although Japan has made CPUs for PCs that can convert speech into written words it has not been able to apply the technology to mobiles because of its relatively weak capability in converting speech with handset CPUs. Researchers at NEC isolated electromagnetic waves of a voice and let three small CPUs individually and simultaneously process by means of phased reading and integrated output. This greatly raised the speed of speech conversion and reduced the time for voice processing by 80 percent. In the meantime the voice recognition rate can reach 85 percent.

Japan's largest mobile communications operator NTT DoCoMo has decided to launch the speech conversion service to meet the demand of various kinds of subscribers.

By People's Daily Online