A group of forward-thinking researchers at American aerospace and
defense contractor Lockheed Martin are currently exploring software methods
that can extract meaning and context from a string of natural human
conversation. In other words, the linguistic subfield of pragmatics is now
being applied to computation and might just lead to the emergence of an era
where fictional Star Trek man-machine conversations might surface into reality.
But as the story usually goes, these technologies are always kept in the
confines of government hands until deemed appropriate for average consumer
deployment.
Nevertheless, the software technology in question is known
as SPLICE, a rather intriguing abbreviation for Spoken Language Interaction for
Computing Environments. In perspective, the significance of the development is
largely attributed to its ability of interacting on a much deeper cognitive
level with humans through natural speech. According to Kenny Sharma, an
engineer at Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Advanced Technology Laboratories, the
software can identify a speaker's intent and draw logical conclusions based on
the information available in context.
The software is extremely flexible and can be applied to a
broad range of industries. However, one of the prominent uses for SPLICE
technology is in battlefield medicine. The idea is that the development of a
medical voice documentation system for trauma patients during wartime would
significantly reduce ambiguities in patient information as details about trauma
cases get passed along the chain of medical intervention in war zones. Rather
than spending precious time-critical minutes gathering data about fatally
injured patients, the system audio records medical personnel as they speak
during treatment.
“If we can passively capture that information, it’s really
valuable stuff,” says Sharma, a member of the Lockheed Martin team developing
the prototype.
This is just one of the various practical uses for the
developing software technology that Lockheed Martin researchers have in mind.
In the consumer space, the possibilities are nearly endless. Google’s voice
recognition technologies have taken the mobile market by force with the
inclusion of voice-powered search applications for iPhone and Android OS
devices, not to mention its audio-indexing for political documentation on
YouTube. Combine the power of location-aware GPS technology with voice
recognition and some context-aware SPLICE and it might someday be possible for
your mobile device to identify some of your rudimentary intentions.