ATLAS: A generic software platform for speech technology based applications
Håkan Melin · 2001
ATLAS is a Java software library that provides a framework for building multilingual and multi-modal applications, especially dialogue systems, on top of speech technology components. The design is based on a layered system model, where ATLAS sits as a middleware between an application-dependent layer and the speech technology components and implements much of application-independent functionality in the system. ATLAS is itself layered with interfaces to speech technology components at the bottom and self-contained dialogue components at the top. The layered design is both efficient and flexible and is suitable for a research environment. The framework also provides support for applicationdependent layers through a structure of an application with sessions interacting with users through terminals. The terminal concept supports creating audio deviceindependent applications that run transparently in both telephone and desktop environments. Several speech technology components are available for use with the ATLAS framework, including text-to-speech, speech recognition and speaker verification systems. Four applications that use ATLAS have so far been developed within student and research projects at the Centre for Speech Technology (CTT), including a speech controlled telephone banking system (CTT-bank) and an automated entrance receptionist (PER). 1.