SW-ASR: A Context-Aware Hybrid ASR Pipeline for Robust Single Word Speech Recognition

Single-word Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is a challenging task due to the lack of linguistic context and sensitivity to noise, pronunciation variation, and channel artifacts, especially in low-resource, communication-critical domains such as healthcare and emergency response. This paper reviews recent deep learning approaches and proposes a modular framework for robust single-word detection. The system combines denoising and normalization with a hybrid ASR front end (Whisper + Vosk) and a verification layer designed to handle out-of-vocabulary words and degraded audio. The verification layer supports multiple matching strategies, including embedding similarity, edit distance, and LLM-based matching with optional contextual guidance. We evaluate the framework on the Google Speech Commands dataset and a curated real-world dataset collected from telephony and messaging platforms under bandwidth-limited conditions. Results show that while the hybrid ASR front end performs well on clean audio, the verification layer significantly improves accuracy on noisy and compressed channels. Context-guided and LLM-based matching yield the largest gains, demonstrating that lightweight verification and context mechanisms can substantially improve single-word ASR robustness without sacrificing latency required for real-time telephony applications.

PustakAI: Curriculum-Aligned and Interactive Textbooks Using Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in understanding and generating human-like content. This has revolutionized various sectors such as healthcare, software development, and education. In education, LLMs offer potential for personalized and interactive learning experiences, especially in regions with limited teaching resources. However, adapting these models effectively to curriculum-specific content, such as the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus in India, presents unique challenges in terms of accuracy, alignment, and pedagogical relevance. In this paper, we present the framework "PustakAI"\footnote{Pustak means `book' in many Indian languages.} for the design and evaluation of a novel question-answering dataset "NCERT-QA" aligned with the NCERT curriculum for English and Science subjects of grades 6 to 8. We classify the curated QA pairs as Factoid, Inferential, and Others (evaluative and reasoning). We evaluate the dataset with various prompting techniques, such as meta-prompt, few-shot, and CoT-style prompting, using diverse evaluation metrics to understand which approach aligns more efficiently with the structure and demands of the curriculum. Along with the usability of the dataset, we analyze the strengths and limitations of current open-source LLMs (Gemma3:1b, Llama3.2:3b, and Nemotron-mini:4b) and high-end LLMs (Llama-4-Scout-17B and Deepseek-r1-70B) as AI-based learning tools in formal education systems.