SPEECH RECOGNITION APPARATUS AND METHOD

A speech recognition apparatus and method are provided, the method including converting an input signal to acoustic model data, dividing the acoustic model data into a speech model group and a non-speech model group and calculating a first maximum likelihood corresponding to the speech model group and a second maximum likelihood corresponding to the non-speech model group, detecting a speech based on a likelihood ratio (LR) between the first maximum likelihood and the second maximum likelihood, obtaining utterance stop information based on output data of a decoder and dividing the input signal into a plurality of speech intervals based on the utterance stop information, calculating a confidence score of each of the plurality of speech intervals based on information on a prior probability distribution of the acoustic model data, and removing a speech interval having the confidence score lower than a threshold.