ÅAU /Experience Lab participates in a speech recognition research project, aiming to develop and test AI algorithms that will recognize some of the different Swedish-speaking dialects across Finland, together with Arcada University of Applied Sciences and StageZero Technologies. The project, funded by The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and led by the Arcada-team, gathers speech data in various Finnish Swedish dialects, develops speech recognition algorithms, and lastly tests the algorithms with Swedish speaking people from across Finland. 

The aim of the project is thus twofold. Initially, we gather open-access labelled speech dialect data together with Finnish Swedish populations from across Finland. Then, we develop a set of ASR technologies and lastly, we invite users to test them for perception, trustworthiness, and competence. The goal is to explore whether communicating with an automated system in one’s own dialect reduces the barriers for using such systems. Increasing the understanding of how people prefer to use robots and automated systems can help steer the direction of developing AI and speed up adoption of such systems as they become available.

The project is headed by Leonardo Espinosa at Arcada University of Applied Sciences, Susanne Hägglund and Sören Andersson at Åbo Akademi University, and Thomas Forss at StageZero Technologies.