TclBLASR: An Automatic Speech Recognition Extension for Tcl

We present TclBLASR, a framework to integrate a proprietary speech recognition engine, an open source script language, such as Tcl/Tk and an open source sound analysis toolkit, such as Snack from KTH, into a user friendly platform that a user can write a Tcl/Tk script application quickly for speech recognition evaluation, speech data collection and automatic annotation, and speech technology demonstration. This framework is extremely useful for third party customer evaluation of speech technologies that do not involve heavy C/C++ program development and extensive knowledge on low-level speech engine APIs. Using the Bell Labs Automatic Speech Recognition (BLASR) engine, coupled with the real-time audio I/O and visualization provided by Snack and the flexible graphical user interface tools embedded in Tcl/Tk, the TclBLASR platform proves to be a useful framework for quick packaging of ASR engines for customer evaluation of the technology without extensive customization of interfaces to meet different needs from a wide range of customers.