From Talking and Listening Devices to Intelligent Communicative Machines
Authors: Roger Moore
Venue: Interspeech 2025 (main)

Abstract: AbstractHaving been 'in the business' of speech technology for over 50 years, I've had the pleasure of witnessing (and being involved first-hand) in many of the astounding developments that have led to the incredible solutions we have today. Indeed, my involvement in the field of spoken language has been somewhat of a love affair, and it's been a huge honour and privilege to have been working with so many excellent researchers on "the most sophisticated behaviour of the most complex organism in the known universe"! Although I've always been heavily committed to the establishment of machine learning approaches to spoken language processing - including publishing one of the first papers on the application of artificial neural networks to automatic speech recognition - my approach has always been one of attempting to uncover the underlying mechanisms of 'intelligent' (speech-based) interaction, on the basis that living systems are remarkably data-efficient in their learning. This talk will both look back (rather a long way) and look forward, asking the question how did we get here and where are we going? I hope that some of my insights may inspire others to follow a similar path.BiographyProf. Moore has over 50 yearsâ experience in Speech Technology R&D and, although an engineer by training, much of his research has been based on insights from human speech perception and production. He studied Computer & Communications Engineering at the University of Essex and was awarded the B.A. (Hons.) degree in 1973. He subsequently received the M.Sc.(Res.) and Ph.D. degrees from the same university in 1975 and 1977 respectively, both theses being on the topic of automatic speech recognition. After a period of post-doctoral research in the Phonetics Department at University College London, Prof. Moore was recruited in 1980 to establish a speech recognition research team at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern. As Head of the UK Government's Speech Research Unit from 1985 to 1999, he was responsible for the development of the Aurix range of speech technology products and the subsequent formation of 20/20 Speech Ltd. Since 2004 he has been Professor of Spoken Language Processing at the University of Sheffield, and also holds Visiting Chairs at Bristol Robotics Laboratory and University College London Psychology & Language Sciences. Since joining Sheffield, his research has focused on understanding the fundamental principles of speech-based interaction, and in 2017 he initiated the first in the series of international workshops on âVocal Interactivity in-and-between Humans, Animals and Robots' (VIHAR).
As President of both the European Speech Communication Association (ESCA) and Permanent Council of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (PC-ICSLP) from 1997, Prof. Moore pioneered their integration to form the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). He was subsequently General Chair for INTERSPEECH-2009 and ISCA Distinguished Lecturer during 2014-15. He has received several awards, including the UK Institute of Acoustics Tyndall Medal for âdistinguished work in the field of speech research and technologyâ, the NATO RTO Scientific Achievement Award for ârepeated contribution in scientific and technological cooperationâ, the LREC Antonio Zampoli Prize for "Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of Language Resources & Language Technology Evaluation within Human Language Technologies", and the ISCA Special Service Medal for "Service in the establishment, leadership and international growth of ISCA". Prof. Moore is the current Editor-in-Chief of Computer Speech & Language, and Associate Editor for Speech Communication, Languages, the Journal of Future Robot Life, and Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Computational Intelligence in Robotics).