ABSTRACT
The paper discusses a research study on using speech recognition technology in order to improve usability of mobile data entry applications in the construction field. Current developments in the multimodal field data communications are discussed. This paper describes a speech-enabled mobile application that allows “hands free” information entry and retrieval and may help to overcome some user interface limitations of a field handheld computer. The multimodal prototype application, developed for data collection in the field, includes a fat wireless client on a Pocket PC that has a multimodal browser and an embedded speech recognition engine. Development of the application was conducted using X + V technology. The evaluation study of the prototype field data collection application in the laboratory is discussed. Based on this discussion, recommendations on the feasibility of using multimodal handheld devices for field data collection in construction and for future research directions for multimodal data collection are presented.
