QOTW: How often do you use speech recognition?

[mud_z]

Really? Not now as most of the speech software are not fully compatible to our accent or say language.. I think it will take some more time to develop but I can bet that in 2020 we will be using speech recognition just as we have now adopted capacitive touch panels. We will find it use in most of the applications. I'm working on similar thing(for better future ).

[Dareos]

My only real experience of this is Kinect tbh. I found it incredibly frustrating as something as simple as Xbox On would take 3 or 4 tries to work, sometimes this was affected by the xbox itself refusing to respond rather than the voice command though. My accent is fairly strong I guess, somewhere between a glaswegian and a lanarkshire accent, neither of which will get you reading the news for the BBC. However I do work in a call centre and I know how to modulate my voice to be understood (took a while, I once had a german girl translate to an american guy as he couldn't understand me).

When with friends I tend to slip into colloquialisms (sp?) and my accent is a bit broader, but when dealing with customers and when abroad, I attempt to pronounce words more clearly and speak more slowly. Kinect however, refuses to recognise me even now. I have it turned off most of the time. (Have a look at Voice Actiivated Lift on Youtube if you want a visual )

My brothers american mother in law once walked into a room where he and my mother and other brother were having a conversation. She excused herself and said " I didnt realise you all spoke gaelic when you were together"...

VR has a long way to go for the Scots i think

[DizConnected]

I use voice attack with Elite Dangerous to raise and lower my landing gear. Guess my next command will be "Lights ON/OFF"

Oh and it works great for sending text on my Windows phone through my car audio while I'm driving.

[GrahamC]

Never used it, well I did about 10 years ago so may as well have been never.

[vti_786]

I use it now and then, for a quick text message or when using the maps app on the android.

[pastymuncher]

Never used it and not interested in it.

[Saracen]

My only real experience of this is Kinect tbh. ....

VR has a long way to go for the Scots i think

Is the limitation with Scots, or Glaswegian, accents with VR, or with Kinect VR?

Having no experience of Kinect, and not having a Scot/Glaswegian accent, I personally couldn't comment. What I would comment on, though, is that having tested several, dedicated VR systems, from the major competitors like Phillips, Lernout and Hauspie, etc, over about 20 years, they vary a LOT.

I settled on Dragon Dictate. It works for me, given the criteria I mentioned above. Also, I can dictate into a pocket voice recorder (Olympus, in my case) and then simply run the file through Dragon later on to transcribe.

My SatNav (Garmin) works pretty well, but it's with pretty simple commands. Dragon is FAR more sophisticated in what it does, but also costs about the same as the entire SatNav did.

Which makes me wonder .... if basing the effectiveness of VR on that found in a SatNav, or phone, or Kinect, are we short-selling what 'proper' voice recog can do? Is that the equivalent of assessing a car's performance or handling on a sub-£10k "reasonably priced car", while ignoring what a £30k BMW or Merc, let alone a Ferrari, Lotus or Aston Martin, can do?

It's a genuine question, too. I don't have a smartphone or Kinect to compare to, but I do have a properly set up and trained PC-based dedicated package, and it works remarkably well. I wonder how well it'd cope with your accent, once properly trained?

Voice recog is not (yet, at least) something that (IMHO) is yet quite mass-market, in the sense of open the box, plug it in, and expect 100% results. It's getting there, but still has a way to go for that level of convenience, yet alone a Star-Trekian implementation. It's probably still about at the stage cellphones were just before going digital from analog .... I.e. past the initial 'brick' stage and more like Sony 'Mars bar' CMH-333 stage, that is, fairly small, but still village idiots compared to today's models.

But give it a few years ....

[lkarunan]

Never

[Dareos]

I dare say a decent mic and Dragon Naturally Speaking or todays equivalent would be better than Kinect and the relatively few commands its programmed to understand. I know someone who works for STV typing live subtitles and they alternate between Dragon and manually entering on a pc, so while it works well for some people it can take too long to train to a voice/accent for other situations such as a live broadcast of a political speech.

Im not sure if I would take to using VR software when it comes to long dissertations or reports as theres a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in order to get it right. I would like to see it implemented in phones for sending text messages and so on while driving, its not always ideal to call or leave a voicemail.

[genkifd]

never. dont like repeating myself.

[tomthum]

Never

[azrael-]

I use it every time someone talks to me.

What a brilliant comment! Spot on!

[Brian224]

Tried using Dragon Dictate for when I am too weak to use the keyboard, but with two parrots in the room I was saying "scratch that" way too much

I get on ok with voice recognition in the car or using Cortana on my phone, but my wife can never seem to be understood by software, despite sounding clear enough to me.

[Millennium]

I use it every time someone talks to me.

Quoted For Truth

I have found myself using the Android one recently to set reminders or alarms. Nothing more than that yet, great to see Saracen's input too .

[Spud1]

I only really use it in two situations:

1) Google Glass/Android Wear (LG R) - works brilliantly here, even if its mostly just a (hiking) sat nav for me these days, its great for replying to SMS on the go.
2) Oculus Rift/Elite Dangerous. Voice control really adds to the already impressive immersion, and with ED it completely changes the game. I have a great Cortana style pack for voice attack that I use, and it means you can leave you hands on the HOTAS all the time, and just talk to the ship as if it were a person.

Otherwise I find that typing or some other input method is usually much more reliable and efficient. We're not quite there yet, and even if we can crack the final bits of the technology issue, its the social one that holds us back. I still feel odd using a hands free kit and walking/talking let alone talking to my watch!

[lucasmicas]

I always use it on my mobile. Don't have patience to write messages.