The research and development in the USTC iFly Speech Laboratory are mainly concentrated on speech analysis & synthesis, speech recognition, speech coding, performance assessment and standardization of speech system, et al.

With the supports from "The National 863 Hi -Tech R & D Plan", "The National Nature Science Foundation of China", and "The National Key Basis Research Plan", the Lab has achieved a series of innovative results in the field of speech since 1991, especially in Chinese Text-To-Speech technology, such as intelligent hierarchical text analysis, Chinese prosody modeling, waveform concatination based on perception quantization, and multi-lingual speech synthesis.

In 1998, the Lab successfully developed the KD-863 Chinese TTS system, which could transfer any Chinese text to speech automatically with higher quality in real time. The system was the only one among its counterparts to reach the "acceptable stage". In 1999, the new version of Chinese TTS System, KD-2000, was appraised to be in the world's leading position both in its technology and in its practicability. In 2000, KD-2000 Chinese Speech Synthesis System won the "Innovation Award" at "The China 2000 International Software Fair."

Following the idea of combining study with research and industry, a company named USTC iFlyTEK Inc. was established in 1999 based on the research results developed in the Lab. Very quickly, USTC iFlyTEK has grown up into a company possessing the powerful ability of technology innovation, the largest assets, the most professional talent, and the largest share of the speech market in China. In June 2000, the Ministry of Science and Technology officially credited USTC iFlyTEK as an industrialization base of "The National 863 Program", the only such base in the country oriented toward speech technology for the industrialization purpose. Just in the same year, it was also honored as a national backbone software enterprise of "The Torch Plan".

photo explain:
USTC iFlyTEK technology show in the China International Hi-tech Fair, 2001