Download this year's contest instructions and entry form.

Last Year's AVIOS Speech Application Development Contest

See the 2006 winning entries

The First Annual AVIOS Speech Application Development Contest held during the fall of 2006 attracted six teams of aspiring speech application developers. The contest was organized by AVIOS and was made possible through the generous sponsorship by Nuance Communications and VoiceObjects, two of the leading names in the speech technology field.

Members of all six teams developed their applications between September and the entry close date of December 15. A panel of judges comprised of AVIOS board members scrutinized each application in detail and scored each on multiple criteria including the following:

• The application operates correctly without bugs or other detectible anomalies.
• The application is original, not similar to other existing applications, or provides an original new twist on an existing application theme.
• The application is simple and intuitive for use by novice users (that is, assistance for beginners is appropriately available)
• The application can be used efficiently by experienced users
• The application is able to achieve what user wants in reasonable time.
• The application is well planned and covers the things people tend to say to it and has adequate error recovery mechanisms for when they say unexpected things

Contestants were encouraged to develop either speech-only or multi-modal applications. Four of the six teams developed multi-modal applications while two produced speech applications. All six applications were original and creative and provided a significant challenge for the judges to select a winner and a runner up. The judges finally selected a multi-modal application developed by students at the OGI School of Science and Engineering as the winner, and a speech application from Auburn University as the runner up.

The Winning Entries:
The winning application entitled “Recipe Reader and Organizer” was developed by Emily Tucker, Darin Toy, Mike Johnson, and Ali Hodroj of the OGI School of Science & Engineering, one the schools of Oregon Health & Science University.

The first runner-up application entitled “Speech Enabled Message Board for Disaster Victims” was developed by Yolanda McMillian, Kenneth Rouse, and Jamey White of Auburn University.

To see these and the other contest entries please visit our entries page.

Contest Sponsors
Nuance, a leading supplier of speech recognition, synthesis, and verification technology, is headquartered in Burlington, MA.

VoiceObjects is the phone application server company. VoiceObjects works with carriers and enterprises around the world to deliver a personalized customer service experience to more than 500 million callers every year.