Speech technology and systems in human-machine communication [from the Guest Editors]
Speech technology and systems in human-machine communication have witnessed a steady and remarkable advancement over the last two decades. Fundamental changes have taken place from theoretical foundations to practical systems, from laboratory prototypes to commercial products, and from proprietary softwares to industrial standards. As the information age continues, research in speech technology is further accelerated by the advent of powerful computing devices, the data-driven pattern recognition methods, and the need to generate machine understandable metadata for Web contents and other information sources.