A view of the future? The potential use of speech recognition for virtual reality applications

Virtual and Interactive Environments for Workplaces (VIEW) of the Future is a project funded by the European Union within the Information Society Technology (IST) program. As part of the project a Special Interest Group has been established to facilitate discussion and research surrounding the potential use of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) in VEs. ne VIEW Speech Group represents a number of areas of expertise ranging from the technical integration of ASR hardware into VEs and potential application areas of ASR; through to the potential human performance issues associated with using ASR technologies within VEs. This paper builds on the knowledge and theory of using real world ASR and considers its transfer into the virtual world. Speech offers the potential to liberate the user and allow a greater degree of freedom, to interact with VEs. However, it is only when the underlying Human Factors issues are considered that the usability of ASR can be enhanced.