article in the age

Business
The Age
Trading Room - FULL DISCLOSURE
IAN PORTER AND NABILA AHMED
990 words
31 August 2006

Voice hits right note
AVIATION systems maker Adacel was at first a little wary when Italian aerospace authorities ordered
40 of its air traffic control simulators, including Adacel's world-leading voice recognition (VR) system.
The VR system has given Adacel the edge in the crucial US market, where Adacel has sold a lot of
systems to the US Air Force and the Federal Aviation Authority for training air traffic controllers.
While English is the international language of aviation, there were some fears that national or regional
accents may trip up Adacel's VR system, which is the company's true differentiator against rival
products. "We wrung our hands a little bit about making it work appropriately," was how North
American Adacel chief Fred Sheldon described it. So they did some tests with two Italian air traffic
controllers, one with "reasonable" English and one with a thick accent.
The system achieved a recognition rate exceeding 96 per cent, which Sheldon said was "phenomenal".
While it was a fraction below the 98 to 99 per cent achieved on the simulators in the US, it was still
streets ahead of the real-world, human-to-human recognition rate between controllers and pilots,
which runs below 90 per cent.
As an aside, he said the Adacel VR system supplied for the Joint Strike Fighter, which the pilot uses to
control on-board functions instead of punching buttons in the cocpit, was running at about 98 per
cent recognition.