The latest Jaguar allows drivers to adjust the climate and sound systems using their voice. Most of these services run on remote servers or PCs where plenty of processing power is available. Over the next few years, voice will become a common interface in a variety of non-PC devices, many of which will be running Linux. Until recently, voice recognition required each user to train the system to recognize his or her particular speech patterns. Like most other software, however, voice recognition improves, given faster processors and more memory.
Recent products reduce training time dramatically.
Speaker-independent software eliminates training entirely. To achieve highly accurate speaker-independent recognition with moderate processing requirements, designers must limit the context and vocabulary of the application. This engine requires 2MB of memory and can run on a 200MHz processor. Composing arbitrary text, such as an e-mail message, requires a much larger vocabulary. This engine requires some training, but only about five minutes per user.