Apparatus and method for recognizing speech

Abstract

In a speech recognition system for effecting substantially linear matching, a start point of an input speech pattern is detected to start counting the frames of the input speech pattern for updating a speech frame number. Each time the speech frame number is updated, a plurality of frame numbers of reference templates are generated in substantially a linear relationship to the frame number, thus providing a plurality of matching paths between each of the reference templates and the input speech pattern. The distance between the input pattern data and the reference template data between the corresponding frames specified by each matching path is calculated each time the speech frame number is updated. An accumulated value of the distances along a matching path from the start point of the input speech until a desired speech frame is regarded as a dissimilarity, and the dissimilarity corresponding to each matching path in each reference template is calculated each time the speech frame is updated. The number of the reference template which gives a minimum dissimilarity is detected and stored. At the time of confirming an end of the input speech, the number of the reference template with the minimum dissimilarity is determined to be the recognized result of input speech.