Swar-Suchak: Open source voice enabled information retrieval system

The constant improvement of both hardware and software related to mobile computing is enhancing the capabilities of mobile devices. The present day mobile phones can run rich stand alone applications as well as distributed client-server applications that access information via a web gateway. This changed environment brings new opportunities as well as constraints for mobile application developers. A move towards open source software offers several advantages for application developers and operating system vendors. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how voice enabled mobile applications can be deployed economically using only open source software to access information from the Web. Swar-Suchak is a voice enabled mobile application for information retrieval in multiple languages. We describe two applications running on Swar-Suchak using the open source Android platform. By linking a mobile phone to a voice gateway, built with open source software, we are able to develop voice enabled web applications which are accessible ubiquitously by anyone, anytime.