Alternatively called speech recognition, voice recognition is a computer software program or hardware device with the ability to decode the human voice. Voice recognition is commonly used to operate a device, perform commands, or write without having to use a keyboard, mouse, or press any buttons. Today, this is done on a computer with ASR (automatic speech recognition) software programs. Many ASR programs require the user to “train” the ASR program to recognize their voice so that it can more accurately convert the speech to text. For example, you could say “open Internet” and the computer would open the Internet browser.

The first ASR device was used in 1952 and recognized single digits spoken by a user (it was not computer driven). Today, ASR programs are used in many industries, including healthcare, military (e.g., F-16 fighter jets), telecommunications, and personal computing (i.e., hands-free computing).

What does voice recognition require?

For voice recognition to work, you must have a computer with a sound card and either a microphone or a headset. Other devices like smart phones have all of the necessary hardware built into the device. Also, the software you use needs voice recognition support, or if you want to use voice recognition everywhere, you need a program like Nuance Naturally Speaking to be installed.

When using voice recognition to control actions on your computer or type for you, it’s a type of input known as voice input.

  • What does voice recognition require?
  • Examples of where you might have used voice recognition.
  • Types of voice recognition systems.
  • Related voice recognition pages.

If you are using Microsoft Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 10, you can also use the included Windows Speech Recognition program.

  • How to use the Windows Speech Recognition feature.

Examples of where you might have used voice recognition

As voice recognition improves, it is being implemented in more places and its very likely you have already used it. Below are examples of where you might encounter voice recognition.

Although speech recognition can be done using any microphone, you get better results if you use a headset.

Types of voice recognition systems

Automatic speech recognition is one example of voice recognition. Below are other examples of voice recognition systems.

  • Speaker dependent system - The voice recognition requires training before it can be used, which requires you to read several words and phrases.
  • Speaker independent system - The voice recognition software recognizes most users’ voices with no training.
  • Discrete speech recognition - The user must pause between each word so that the speech recognition can identify each separate word.
  • Continuous speech recognition - The voice recognition can understand a normal rate of speaking.
  • Natural language - The speech recognition not only can understand the voice, but can also return answers to questions or other queries that are being asked.

AVR, Biometrics, Hands-free, Mousegrid, Phoneme, Screen reader, Sound terms, Speech synthesis, Voice, VoIP

  • What programs can I use for speech recognition?
  • How to get my computer to talk to me.