New cell phone software boosts voice recognition ability

LONDON: Scientists have created a new system that has the potential to boost cellphone performance.

Emiliano Miluzzo of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and his colleagues have created software 'Darwin' to recognise an event, such as a specific person's voice, and how that may change in different conditions, such as when that person is in a noisy room. The phones then share this information with other phones that contain the software.

This sharing allowed phones with Darwin to correctly identify which person was speaking with up to 90 per cent accuracy, compared with just 60 per cent in a control group that didn't have the software on their phones.

"By relying on the resources around you, you get better results. The idea is to make the sensing process on phones scalable," New Scientist quoted Miluzzo as saying.

He added that Darwin could be used to improve other cell phone applications that rely on sensor data, such as GPS.