132062Improved voice control and transcription for wearable electronic devicesClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKBy most accounts the user experience with wearable electronic devices such as smartwatches is frustrated by the poor voice-machine interface. Due to the vulnerability of speech recognition to wind noise and overlapping talkers, caused by the devices' inability to discriminate sounds based on their location, the user is required to move the device very close to his/her mouth. In many situations this action prevents the screen from being viewed during voice control. We will investigate the feasibility of improving voice control and transcription using a blind source separation (BSS) technology developed at the University of Surrey. The objective of our work will be to reduce the untrained word recognition error rate by 50% compared to a single-mic system. This work is highly innovative because conventional source separation techniques require capsule separations that are too large (>15cm) for smartwatch applications. Success will transform the ease of inputting commands and text verbally into wearable devices in everyday settings.