Development of Punjabi Automatic Speech Recognition Application for Mobile Devices

Speech recognition based mobile device applications are gaining popularity due to their ease of use, flexibility as well as ability to provide hands-free access to device features and functions for persons without hands or with disabilities like blindness. The increased accuracy of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems and support to multiple languages is further motivating the researchers to develop such applications. The development of an application for mobile device helps to validate the applicability of an ASR system in real world environment. An android based speech recognition application for calling and messaging features has been designed and developed in this paper. User can send message or call to any phone number or contact stored in the mobile phone using Punjabi speech. Punjabi based ASR system having pronunciation dictionary, acoustic model and language model is used to implement the underlying speech recognition for Punjabi speakers. Speech user interface has been designed using Android, while AndroidPocketSphinx has been used as speech decoder. The successfully running application has been tested for multiple male and female native Punjabi speakers, followed by thorough performance analysis. The results shown are quite optimistic with a very low combined error of 1.6% for all female speakers and 2.1% for all male speakers. The application gives 98.4% success rate or recognition accuracy for female speakers and 97.9% for male speakers for the underlying Punjabi based ASR system.