There aren’t too many good-news stories coming out of Iraq, but here’s one. The U.S. military is bridging the communications gap amidst its soldiers and Iraqis by tapping some innovative speech recognition technology from IBM Research. Using a laptop computer or PDA, soldiers speak into a microphone and the software translates what they say in English into Arabic. Iraqi soldiers or civilians see and construct out the words in Arabic, and their answers are immediately translated into English.

About 10,000 of these systems are in use in the battle zone.

But what’s a boon for the U.S. military highlights a conundrum for IBM Research, which provides the technology gratis. When the military selected speech recognition technology for a new medical records network, it chose an offering from market leader, Burlington [Mass.]-based Nuance Communications. For all of IBM’s expertise and resources, the 3,000 or so scientists in its basic research […]

Orginal post by dhiram