Future Speech Interfaces with Sensors and Machine Intelligence

Speech is the most spontaneous and natural means of communication, as well as the preferred modality for interacting with mobile or fixed electronic devices, but speech in-terfaces have drawbacks, such as a lack of user privacy; non-inclusivity for certain users; poor robustness in noisy conditions; and the difficulty of creating complex man-machine interfaces. The Special Issue "Future Speech Interfaces with Sensors and Machine Intelligence" assembles eleven contributions that cover multimodal and silent speech interfaces; lip reading applications; novel sensors for speech interfaces; and enhanced speech inclusivity tools for future speech interfaces. The articles make important improvements beyond the state of the art, advancing the state of the art to new frontiers in some cases. Short summaries of all articles, grouped by topic, are presented, followed by a global commentary and evaluation.