Voice Activated Cockpit Management Systems, VACMS NextGen, from simple to complex architectures

Technological advances (GPWS, TCAS, FMS, WAAS, ESV, ADS-B) improved flight safety but engendered more complexity and increased pilot/computer interaction and workload with aviation accident rate unchanged for the past decade. Cockpit interactions would be safer and more efficient thorugh Voice Communication. Though Voice Recognition systems are becoming widely used, in flight environment conditions usage has been limited due to the unique challenges of elevated noise levels, specific cockpit lexicon, limited cockpit hardware, and lack of standardization. SouthernAir Aviation Inc. has developed a NextGen Voice Activated Cockpit Management system with applications for flight procedures, emergency procedures, control of aircraft systems and flight management systems. From simple to complex architectures, the system syncronizes software applications and aircraft systems in a unified model of both language and safety critical development environment to voice activate functions using NextGen Voice Recognition with heuristic pilot response. Procedures are enabled through wireless Bluetooth connection or wired communication. Additional tools of the system include a novel HMM Model comprising a decision management algorithm and synthetic lexicon for parsing and contiguous recognition. All the performance requirements are met within a 2% time-slice of a 700MHz Power PC processor and within 1 GB of memory. Unique key capabilities include: Automatic Lexicon Development, Phonetic Distance Analysis, Coarticulation Handling, Accent Tolerability. The NextGen advanced performance relies on allophone parsing and reduced recognition error with data processing in real-time, ideal for critical emergency situations. This 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). We gratefully acknowledge NASA SBIR Phase I Support.