Edu-leaders

Hyderabad-based International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) is developing a mobile technology that would accept speech as input and convert it into text.

Director of IIIT, Rajeev Sangal informed that this technology will be ready for use in the next two years. This project has been funded by the Ministry of Information Technology. He explained, ‘Suppose, anybody does not know reading or writing, they can dictate the phone the SMS, which they would like to send. They should be able to speak it out and then the phone will convert it into text and send it as a message."

Seven other institutions are currently working on this project. This technology will be useful in mobile phones, which have smaller screens and keyboard, making it difficult to type letters. The speech lab of the IIIT aims to develop robust speech systems for applications, such as speech translation, phonetic engine for Indian languages, speaker recognition for biometrics, and dialog systems in speech mode.