Contact: Yuandong Lin, Institute for Manufacturing & Dr. Kai Yu, Machine Intelligence Group, Engineering
Mentors: Adrian Swinburne
AI Speech were finalists in the 2008 CUE £5k business creation competition. The team has developed a new software product for teaching spoken Chinese to non-native speakers. This software is based on speech recognition and analysis technology which uses the latest methods and approaches, tailored specifically for the needs of the Chinese language.
The first released product is expected to focus on spoken language teaching in a range of scenarios. For example, individuals could use it to study spoken Chinese, either online or on their own computers, and it could be used as a resource in schools and universities, both in the classroom and for practice at home. However there is a wide range of other potential uses for this technology which the AI Speech team are keen to investigate.
The i-Team will work with Dr. Kai Yu (Research Associate, Machine Intelligence Group), Yuangdong Lin (Visitor at the IfM) and Shixing Gao to investigate novel applications for the speech recognition system, and to recommend the best areas for its use. For each application area they will also investigate the best customers to target with that market – for example, in the education market the team would investigate the advantages and disadvantages of approaching schools directly or partnering with existing suppliers of educational technology.