Boltzmann machines for speech recognition

  • Authors:
  • R. W. Prager;T. D. Harrison;F. Fallside

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • Computer Speech and Language
  • Year:
  • 1986

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Abstract

Boltzmann machines offer a new and exciting approach to automatic speech recognition, and provide a rigorous mathematical formalism for parallel computing arrays. In this paper we briefly summarize Boltzmann machine theory, and present results showing their ability to recognize both static and time-varying speech patterns. A machine with 2000 units was able to distinguish between the 11 steady-state vowels in English with an accuracy of 85%. The stability of the learning algorithm and methods of preprocessing and coding speech data before feeding it to the machine are also discussed. A new type of unit called a carry input unit, which involves a type of state-feedback, was developed for the processing of time-varying patterns and this was tested on a few short sentences. Use is made of the implications of recent work into associative memory, and the modelling of neural arrays to suggest a good configuration of Boltzmann machines for this sort of pattern recognition.