Use of Speech Technologies in Space Operations

Paper number

IAC-06-B4.4.07

Author

Mr. Maurizio Martignano, Serco FM B.V., The Netherlands

Year

2006

Abstract

Various attempts have been conducted in the past to apply speech synthesis and recognition to software applications in the space operations application domain. Up to now speech synthesis and recognition have been based on specific, custom developed technologies. Solutions based on these technologies were usually speaker dependent, required a considerable training and were not easily transferable from one application to the other.

In the last few years two major events have marked the speech synthesis and recognition arena: the appearance of standards (e.g. VoiceXML and SALT) supported by various software platforms and the availability of powerful open source tool sets (e.g. “Festival”, “Sphinx”, “FreeTTS”, etc…).

This paper presents some prototype implementations where solutions based on the speech standards and on open source software have been applied to the space field. Two special cases are analyzed in detail: crew and ground procedure execution and the handling of emergency situations in case of depressurization. In developing and analyzing these prototype implementations special attention has been paid to the computing platforms available on the International Space Station, i.e. laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

The paper will show that it is currently possible to develop speech enabled applications which are:
a. based on technologies available today;
b. speaker independent (e.g. do not require any training); c. are computationally affordable (i.e. can run on the currently available hardware and software infrastructures).  

The paper is divided into four sections. The first section provides some background information on the past speech technologies and their application to the space field. The second section presents the new speech standards and open source speech libraries and packages. The third section describes the prototype implementations of space applications developed for both laptops and PDAs. The last section discusses the achieved results and presents a possible road ahead for the future; in particular the section shows how these technologies and solutions could be applied to several other application domains, different from space.

Abstract document

IAC-06-B4.4.07.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-06-B4.4.07.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.