Abstract: A speaker independent, continuous speech, word spotting voice recognition system and method. The edges of phonemes in an utterance are quickly and accurately isolated. The utterance is broken into wave segments based upon the edges of the phonemes. A voice recognition engine is consulted multiple times for several wave segments and the results are analyzed to correctly identify the words in the utterance.

Abstract: A voice recognition system which controls industrial equipment or machinery. A proximity detector is attached to automatically adjust microphone sensitivity and to control automatic shutdown when the machine operator is not present. An enhanced barge-in feature uses a data switch that includes an input audio delay storage. The delay storage prevents loss of initial input data by delaying the input until the data switch switches from output to input modes. A variety of audio/video responses are provided to vary output and enhance attention span. Rules based input data handling provides a flexible response to user input.