US military to add voice interface to engineers' mobile IT

The US military is adding a speech interface to a system it uses to provide technical and economic data for its engineers and operations managers.

In a six-month project, the US Department of Defense will incorporate speech recognition technology from Voxgen into its Leeds lifecycle engineering system. The system, which can be accessed via a variety of mobile devices, holds information including design data, parts inventories, operational histories and maintenance instructions.

The speech interface will give engineers hands-free access to data while performing maintenance tasks and enable inspections to be recorded through voice input.