In this paper we describe the design of telephony Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) System which can be used by low literate users. For this purpose we have deploy a spoken query system over Asterisk server using Bluetooth enabled mobile as client interface . Bodo speech data are collected by using the developed IVR module form BTAD area. All incoming calls are handled by Asterisk Server i.e. Computer telephony interface (CTI). The system asks to prompt 31 different words in Bodo which include Bodo digit, agricultural word and Yes/No. The collected speech is manually transcript and labeled for ASR system training. We discuss our experiences and fieldwork which includes design of the IVR using asterisk, Bodo ASR engine using sphinx and related study in the field of agricultural domain. We also evaluate low cost, rapidly deployable speech technologies for new languages as a means to improve equitable, affordable access to information technology (IT). The performance of a speech recognizer built using Bodo language is evaluated on the basis of word error rate and we 77.24 % word accuracy in training mode and 72.12 % in testing mode.

Signal Processing, Telephony Application, Asterisk server, Interactive Voice Response

[1] Nitin Bhagachand Bachhav," Information Needs of the Rural Farmers : A Study from Maharashtra, India: A Survey" , in Library Philosophy and Practice (LPP) (ISSN 1522-0222), 2012
[2] Muhammad Asif Naveed and Mumtaz A. Anwar , “Agricultural Information Needs of Rural Pakistani Farmers ”, in Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, Vol. 18, no. 3, 2013: 13-23.
[3] Assam Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium, http:// assamagribusiness.nic.in.
[4] Agricultural Marketing Information Network - AGMARKNET,http://agmarknet.nic.in.
[5] Joyanta Basu, Milton S. Bepari, Rajib Roy, Soma Khan, " Telephony Speech Recognition System: Challenges" in National Conference on Communication Technologies & its impact on Next Generation Computing CTNGC 2012, Proceedings published by International Journal of Computer Applications® (IJCA).
[6] https://mahtabrasheed.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/mobile-phones-based-agricultural-information-systems, accessed in Septembor, 2016
[7] Asterisk.org, "Features of Asterisk PBX", http://www.asterisk.org/features, accessed in Septembor, 2016
[8] http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net, accessed in Septembor,2016
[9] Gautam Varma Mantena, S. Rajendran, B. Rambabu, Suryakanth V. Gangashetty, B. Yegnanarayana, Kishore Prahallad, "A speech-based conversation system for accessing agriculture commodity prices in Indian languages", IEEE Explore , ISBN: 978-1-4577-0999-9, 2011
[10] S Shahnawazuddin, Deepak Thotappa, B D Sarma, A Deka, S R M Prasanna and R Sinha,"Assamese Spoken Query System to Access the Price of Agricultural Commodities", NCC 2013, IITDelhi.
[11] Asterisk open source communications, http://www.asterisk.org/home.
[12] S. Goel and M. Bhattacharya, “Speech based dialog query system over asterisk pbx server,” in 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS), Dalian, Jul 2010.