There is a need for powerful, extensible speech research tools with an interactive interfaces. This effort is to produce an integrated set of software tools to enable speech research and is a contribution to research infrastructure. The tools to be included support speech analysis, speech production and speech recognition, particularly from the acoustic point of view. The neural network simulation tools provide the ability to simulate recognition tools with biological plausibility. The tools may also be used for teaching students about speech and computer speech recognition. The specific goals are to (a) enhance existing software research current tools, (b) develop an portable and extensible environment, (c) develop documentation for users, and (d) provide distribution of the software. The tools will be available free of charge and will be distributed with documented source code so they can be enhanced locally. Since the toolkit will be portable to several platforms, it can short-circuit the need to reinvent the same tools, with different errors and bugs, in each speech research laboratory. Students would be able to graduate with a toolkit useful in subsequent research and teaching and the cost of subsequent research may be reduced. The communities of potential users of these tools include computer speech recognition researchers, speech pathologists, speech psychologists, linguists, and others.
