Voice Activated Cockpit Management Systems: Voice-Flight NexGen

Speaking to the cockpit as a method of system management in flight can become an effective interaction method, since voice communication is very efficient. Automated Speech Recognition in general, and aided and abetted now by Southern Air Aviation's Voice Activated Cockpit Management Systems including the innovative heuristic technology Voice-Flight NexGen (VFNG) has advanced significantly in recent years and is now ideally suited to this application. VFNG is speaker-independent, achieves a word recognition rate of 98% in high noise and up to 120Db, and permits the chaining of up to four commands in a single utterance and a correction of a misspoken command in the same utterance. All of these performance requirements are met within a 2% time-slice of a 1.2GHz Power PC processor and within 1 GB of memory. VFNG includes the following unique key capabilities, Grammar Development, Dictionary Development, Automated Batch Grammar Testing, Grammar Coverage Query, Phonetic Distance Analysis, and Co‐articulation Handling, Command Based Confidence Algorithm, Accent Tolerability Handling, State Based Dynamic Grammar, and Clipped Audio Recovery Processing. VFNG incorporates proprietary Julius based grammar and vocabulary of advanced performance and reduced recognition error together with an acoustic model derived from the VoxForge acoustic model. The VFNG-Emergency Failures (VFNG-E) system is used as the sole human/machine interface in flight in real emergency situations, in addition to the system having applications for simulator and ground training. This training system is remarkable in that it achieves very high recognition rates (98%) with a very large command set (131,000 unique words and thousands of word combinations) in challenging environmental conditions and operator profiles providing much added safety and efficiency to the pilot in the cockpit.

Voice Activated Cockpit Management Systems represented by Voice-Flight:NexGen (VFNG) Technologies and Products have applications for NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) since it advances the boundaries of aeronautical knowledge for the benefit of the Nation and the broad aeronautics community, which includes the Agency's partners in academia, industry, and other government agencies. VFNG Products include integrated systems and support interfacing with multiple emerging applications and revolutionary concepts that will enable radical change to both the airspace system and the aircraft that fly within it, facilitating a safer, more environmentally friendly, and more efficient air transportation system. VFNG Technologies and Products will provide advanced levels of automated support and efficiency to air navigation service providers and aircraft operators enabling shortened routes for time and fuel savings, reduced traffic delays, increased capacity, and permitting controllers to monitor and manage aircraft with greater safety margins. This transformation has the aim of reducing gridlock in the sky and at airports. In conjunction with expanding air traffic management capabilities, VFNG technologies are being used for research to help define the boundaries for safe flight, noise reduction, efficiency, performance, and safety challenges that are required to ensure vehicles can support the NextGen vision.

� Voice-Flight NexGen Emergency Failures System (VFNG-E) Comprises VFNG Technology and Voice Activated Emergency Failure Recoveries Specific for Each Aircraft System Failure and Specific Command Configurations for Each Recovery. � Voice-Flight NexGen Instrument System (VFNG-IFR) Comprises VFNG Technology and Voice Activated ILS and TACAN Control, Communications systems control, Frequency selection, Targeting and Assignment, Waypoint entry, Steer point entry. � Voice-Flight NexGen Automated Navigation (VFNG-Nav) Comprises VFNG Technology and Voice Activated Autopilot control, TFLIR Control, Command Macros, Lights control, Transponder entry and control. � Voice-Flight NexGen Automated Weather (VFNG-WX) Comprises VFNG Technology and Voice Activated Weather Display management, System information requests and updates.

This is a mature technology (TRL 9) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.