ESCA - NATO/RSG 10 Workshop on Applications of Speech Technology Lautrach, Germany September 16-17, 1993

Vocal Access to the AFP Scientific News Service Through the Telephone Network

Frederic Gavignet (1), Francis Charpentier (1), Martine Merle (2), Jacques Toent (3), Azim Mitha (4)

(1) Cap Gemini Innovation, Boulogne-Billancourt, France
(2) Agence France-Presse, Paris, France
(3) Elan Informatique, Rarnonville St-Agne, France (4)
CTL Telematique, Paris, France

This paper describes an interactive voice response (IVR) system that provides telephone access to the scientific news produced by the French Press Agency (AFP). *. Speech recognition is used to facilitate the access to the news items through a list of keywords corresponding to forty predefined scientific topics. Text-to-speech synthesis is used for the vocal output of the news items since they are changed every week. When entering the service, the caller first selects a topic, then he listens to the existing titles and abstracts, and if he wishes he orders the complete text of a given article for subsequent fax transmittal. The four-channel server runs on a PC based platform that uses commercially available speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis boards. The system will be installed in the Paris area in autumn 93 and will be run as a shared-revenue service.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Gavignet, Frederic / Charpentier, Francis / Merle, Martine / Toent, Jacques / Mitha, Azim (1993): "Vocal access to the AFP scientific news service through the telephone network", In AST-1993, 15-18.