Speech Recognition Software; an Alternative to Reduce Ship Control Manning

This study identifies factors affecting the performance of commercial-off-the-shelf speech recognition software (SRS) when used for ship control purposes. After a review of research in the feasibility and acceptability of SRS-based ship control, the paper examines the effects of: * A restricted vocabulary versus a large vocabulary, * Low experience level conning officers versus high experience level conning officers, * Male versus female voices, * Pre-test training on specific words versus no pre-test training. Controlled experimentation finds that: * The experience level of a conning officer has no significant impact on SRS performance. * Female participants experienced more SRS errors than did their male counterparts. However, in this experiment, only a limited number of trials were available to assess a difference. * SRS with restricted vocabulary performs no better than SRS with large vocabularies. * Using the software "correct as you go" feature may impact software performance. Following the user profile establishment, individual user training on two specific words reduces error rates significantly.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA is the author of 'Speech Recognition Software; an Alternative to Reduce Ship Control Manning', published 2004 under ISBN 9781423585718 and ISBN 1423585712.