Safety and operating issues for mobile human-machine interfaces

In this paper we present recent research and development efforts carried out at DaimlerChrysler to integrate speech technology for use in mobile environments, notably in cars. Speech undeniably has the potential to considerably improve the safety and user friendliness of Human-machine interfaces, especially when complex technical functionalities and devices need to be accessed. As an example, we describe Linguatronic, a commercially available in-vehicle Command&Control dialog system. In addition, the SmartKom project demonstrates advanced concepts for intuitive multimodal computer interfaces in three different application scenarios.