Distant Speech Recognition: Bridging the Gaps

While great progress has been made in both fields, there is currently a relatively large rift between researchers engaged in acoustic array processing and those engaged in automatic speech recognition. This is unfortunate for many reasons, but most of all because it prevents the two sides, both of whom are investigating different aspects of the same problem, from truly understanding one another and cooperating. In many cases, the two sides see each other through the eyes of strangers. If ground breaking progress is to be made in the emerging field of distant speech recognition (DSR), this abysmal state of affairs must change. In this work, we outline five pressing problems in the DSR research field, and we make initial proposals for their solutions. The problems discussed here are by no means the only ones that must be solved in order to construct truly effective DSR systems. Nonetheless, their solution, in our view, will represent significant first steps towards this goal, inasmuch as the solution of each of these problems will require a substantial change in the mind-sets and thought patterns of those engaged in this field of research.