Mathifier — Speech recognition of math equations

Speech recognition has become widely used across many applications. Telephone systems can route a phone call based on what the caller says, control systems can respond to actions said by the controller, and mobile phones can recognize the speech of a contact´s name and call the respective contact directly. However, speech recognition has found little use in recognition of textual material due to the large dictionary and hence large word error rates. Mathifier constricts the speech recognition to math equations; it takes as input math formulas presented in the form of user speech and produces the equations in digital mathematical form. The smaller dictionary and the specific grammar structure of the math equations help restrict the problem of the recognition process. The program has room for smartly guessing words based on the grammar structure and thus resulting in a lower error rate and better recognition. Mathifier uses Sphinx, a modular speech recognition tool from CMU, and adapts it to recognize math equations and convert them into latex form in real time.