Designs that talk and listen: Integrating functional information using voice-enabled CAD systems

In this paper, we report a novel approach to voice-enabled design synthesis and management. This approach consists of integrating ?text-to-speech? and ?speech-to-text? tools within a software prototype developed in MATLAB that connects seamlessly to a computer aided design software via an application program interface. Users can train the software to recognize specific words spoken by them and subsequently query for functions of individual parts or subassemblies. The results indicate the feasibility of interactive voice enabled product lifecycle management (PLM) tools in the future, where designing on the fly can be increasingly supported.