a) Yes, it performs speech recognition b) It's different in that it's not just a monolithic speech recognition engine that functions as a black box taking spee

a) Yes, it performs speech recognition b) It's different in that it's not just a monolithic speech recognition engine that functions as a black box taking speech as input and producing text as output. Instead, the point is to be an extensible platform which researchers can use to develop new techniques, plugging in their own algorithms and testing the results. (At least that's how I understand it, but I'm not affiliated with the project.)