Lyrebird

Telstra New Wave Pty Ltd (TNW), a wholly owned subsidiary of Australia's Telstra Corporation Ltd, has announced the release of version 1.0 of Lyrebird, a tool for the development of natural language speech applications.

The release follows successful trialing of the system, which, in a recent benchmark against a standard tool, achieved a 10-fold improvement in prototype development time and a 4-fold improvement in the time required for developing final applications, while achieving the same level of grammar accuracy.

Lyrebird's advantages stem from the use of machine learning techniques to automate the generation of natural language grammars that can result in a significant reduction of application development effort. TNW holds a number of patent applications for the technology. In their experience, Lyrebird allows developers to create, simulate, refine and deploy complex and high quality natural language speech applications in a shorter timeframe.

Lyrebird can generate code in either VoiceXML with Nuance or JSGF grammar formats, or proprietary IVR formats such as Periphonics. Future features of the system already under development include knowledge discovery and natural language searching components, as well as the support of additional speech-enabled IVRs.

Commercial trials are now under way with a number of companies and TNW will be happy to speak to other potential customers or to organizations looking to act as channel partners for this development. A demonstration disk and a White Paper are available from TNW.

Visit the Lyrebird Web site for further information.