Nuance Unveils One-Shot Destination Entry Technology on Microsoft’s Auto 3.1 Platform

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Nuance Communications today announced One-Shot Destination Entry technology on Microsoft’s Auto platform at Embedded World.

Nuance’s One-Shot Destination Entry is based on the latest version of Nuance VoCon 3200, the speech recognition engine that now supports new search algorithms to allow one-shot, multi-slot entry in just one spoken command. Instead of walking through a multi-step dialog and responding to independent prompts for city name, street name and house number, the user can simply speak the address in one shot, stating for example, “196 Sunset Boulevard, San Francisco, California.”

Loquendo Makes Speech Recognition and Text to Speech Available for iPhone 3G

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Speech technologies provider Loquendo announced today that Loquendo Embedded TTS and ASR now available for the new iPhone 3G in more than 20 languages.

With their voice, iPhone users can select and play MP3 files, or use their device for voice-enabled GPS navigation, or to read aloud SMS and email messages. [click heading for more]

Voice search for the iPhone? Maybe someday

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For years, people have wondered when they would be able to voice a command to a digital device, have it understand the query, and respond with some degree of intelligence. That day still isn't here, but speech-technology companies like Nuance are working on it.
On Tuesday, Nuance, maker of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the desktop, said that it has developed a prototype for voice search on Apple's iPhone. In August, the company plans to start selling a downloadable application for the iPhone that lets them speak a question to the phone to retrieve search results from Google or another search engine, according to Steve Chambers, Nuance's president of mobile and consumer services. Chambers said that Nuance hasn't set a price for the application yet. [click heading for more]

Long-Promised, Voice Commands Are Finally Going Mainstream

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Speech technology has long languished in the no-man's land between sci-fi fantasy ("Computer, engage warp drive!") and disappointing reality ("For further assistance, please say or press 1 ...").
But that's about to change, as advances in computing power make voice recognition the next big thing in electronic security and user-interface design.
A whole host of highly advanced speech technologies, including emotion and lie detection, are moving from the lab to the marketplace.
"This is not a new technology," says Daniel Hong, an analyst at Datamonitor who specializes in speech technology. "But it took a long time for Moore's Law to make it viable." [click heading for more]

Pioneer releases LINC with speech recognition

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Pioneer's Mobile Entertainment Division (Long Beach, Ca.) is releasing the promised AVIC-F500BT LINC (Lifestyle Innovation Network Console), a portable navigation and speech recognition unit.

The device incorporates Pioneer's "VoiceBox Conversational Voice Search Platform," a nicely developed speech recognition system that enables iPod or other MP3 players and voice control for you Bluetooth-connected phone. VoiceBox's innovation is it's extraction algorihm that allow what Pioneer terms "conversational commands" and "intent recognition", and very advanced noise-canceling that deals quite well with ambient vehicle noise and the presence of extra voices.

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Philips partners with VoiceViewer Technologies to provide nurses with point-of-care solution for structured medical reporting

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Royal Philips Electronics today announced that its SpeechMagic technology will be integrated into VoiceViewer’s application software to support the accurate and efficient capture of patient information at the point of care. The companies will showcase a new handheld device that allows nursing staff to enter information into their systems by voice. With this collaboration, Philips continues to expand the application of speech recognition technologies in healthcare and support patient safety by enabling healthcare staff to capture and act upon reliable information.

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Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that its industry-leading speech recognition solutions are now available in the Tempo E2000, a new 2GB music-enabled handset from Kyocera Wireless Corp. that also features video on demand (VOD) as well as a 1.3 megapixel camera. The Tempo E2000 is currently available to consumers through wireless carrier MetroPCS, with additional U.S. and international launches planned.

Nuance® speech-recognition technology enables speaker-independent name and digit dialing, meaning a user can dial by pushing a single button and speaking a name from the phone’s contact directory or saying the digits of the phone number. The technology also supports a number of additional command and control functions including launching applications and navigating menus, among others.

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The Coming Wave of Gadgets That Listen and Obey

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INNOVATION usually needs time to steep. Time to turn the idea into something tangible, time to get it to market, time for people to decide they accept it. Speech recognition technology has steeped for a long time: Mike Phillips remembers that in the 1980s, when he was a Carnegie Mellon graduate student trying to develop rudimentary speech recognition systems, “it seemed almost impossible.”
Now, devices that incorporate speech recognition are starting to hit the mass market, thanks to entrepreneurs like Mr. Phillips. [click heading for more]

New Garmin GPS lets drivers talk back

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Garmin International today unveiled a new portable navigator with speech recognition, allowing users to get travel directions by simply asking for them.
The nuvi 880 is Garmin’s first Global Positioning System device with speech recognition. Garmin contends the device works straight out of the box without “training” the navigator to recognize voice commands. [click heading for more]