The first rule of driving is, to paraphrase the Doors, to keep your eyes on the road and hands upon the wheel. However, the increasing usage of cell phones, digital music players, and GPS units in automobiles distracts drivers and creates potentially hazardous situations. Many states and countries have already started requiring hands-free operation of cell phones while driving, and it's likely that such legislation will grow and further cover personal navigation devices and other potential in car distractions. Speech recognition and synthesis solutions offer a great alternative user interface for accessing these devices safely while on the road.

These issues are no longer relevant with Sensory's new patent pending TrulyHandsfree™ Voice Control. It is designed to make in-car systems completely hands-free, and can act as the trigger for any in-car speech solution regardless if the technology is Sensory's or another such as Nuance's. The beauty of the TrulyHandsfree Voice Control technology is that it can be added into existing systems without modifying proven hardware or software configurations. Truly Hands-Free Triggers can act as an extra gateway to activate the system, without requiring the removal of buttons or existing speech solutions. It's the fast path to a high value upgrade or a great new interface technology for systems that bring safety and convenience to the automotive market.

The recent successes of new touch-based user interfaces (iPod, iPhone, Wii, etc.), has opened the eyes of home appliance manufacturers to the benefits of giving customers new and better ways to control products and access information. Speech I/O is the perfect solution to give consumers an easier, more convenient, cleaner, and more fun way to control products in the home.

Whether for couch potatoes wanting A/V control without reaching for the remote, or cooks not wanting to get the controls dirty, speech recognition and synthesis can help to differentiate and improve the user interface in a variety of household products. Speech synthesis output can be used for confirmations (“oven temperature set to 105 degrees”), queries (“Please say the device you would to control by voice”), or even fun and information purposes, like a refrigerator that tells a joke or a fun fact when its held open for more than 3 seconds.

Sensory’s speech chips can often replace the controller that already exists in remote controls, microwaves, ovens, dishwashers and other home electronics, allowing the addition of speech I/O with very little incremental cost. Sensory is the only supplier that offers both chips and software solutions for low cost speech recognition, thus enabling customers to use the best platforms for their particular applications.

Sensory’s NLP and RSC line of chips are perfect for adding speech recognition, speech synthesis, music and a host of other functions to toys and robotic devices. Sensory’s toy customers include 9 of the top 10 electronic toy companies in the world today, and have shipped in hundreds of different toy products to tens of millions of consumers. Toys made with Sensory IC’s have been designed to work (talking and hearing) in over 15 languages around the world. Sensory has built the largest database of children’s voices for use in training speech recognizers in the world.

Sensory maintains an active technology group dedicated to bringing out new technologies to differentiate and add value to our toy and robotics customers. These functions include:

• Speech recognition to talk to and control toys
• Speech synthesis output. Sensory has the highest quality low data rate solutions.
• Speaker verification for use in security products, like the hit series of girls voice lock diaries
• Beat detection listens to external music and knows the beat (for flashing lights, etc.)
• Sound sourcing – 2 mic solution knows where people are speaking form
• Realtime lipsynch – dolls can sing along to your ipod music, or act as an automated
  ventriloquist aid
• Sonic networking – 2 products with Sensory IC’s can communicate back and forth with sonic audio streams, saving the cost or IR or rf transmissions

The convenience and added value of voice dialing and voice command and control in wireless handsets is very well established. Voice search function and voice navigation will become mainstream over the coming years, as it already has in smart phones. Sensory provides a full suite of software only solutions for very high accuracy speech recognition that doesn’t wear down the batteries (lower MIPS capabilities) and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Two particularly interesting and unique speech technologies that Sensory offers are Speaker Verification and our TrulyHandsfree™ Voice Control. Speaker Verification on a phone can be used as a password enhancement or replacement, and since it’s on the client handset, it does not require the phone to connect in order to use it. The TrulyHandsfree Voice Control technology is an excellent way to make in-car experiences safer and at-home use more convenient. By speaker a magic word trigger phrase the phone wakes up and can then carry out other embedded or cloud based voice controls or search functions. The Sensory trigger is a nice solution for Android devices that can go from Sensory on the client to Google’s voice server in the clouds in a seamless fashion. Here’s a new Samsung phone introduced at Mobile World Congress 2011 that uses Sensory’s technology for waking up by saying “Hey Galaxy!”

Sensory’s BlueGenie™ Voice Interface Solution for CSR’s BlueCore5 chip enables manufacturers of Bluetooth Headsets and Hands-free Kits to implement full voice control and synthetic speech output without the need for button pressing, visual displays, or complex user interfacing. Features will include basic command and control, continuous digit dialing, name dialing, and speech output for confirmations and caller ID.

BlueGenie Lite™ for CSR’s BC-5 and BC-3 is Sensory’s Bluetooth solution for entry level headsets and HFKs to add high quality voice prompts to their systems with minimal impact on flash memory requirements due to advanced Sensory proprietary compression technologies. It is the most cost-effective way to add customizable Caller ID and user-friendly system prompt notifications to Bluetooth devices.

Many industrial and medical product developers have found that the ease of use and improved user experience provided by voice control and synthetic speech output is an excellent way to differentiate and add value to their products. Sensory’s VR Stamps provide a small, convenient, and easy to integrate daughter-board package for system designers not wanting to spend a lot of time on new designs, but desiring to add options for extended features. The VR stamps take a Sensory RSC chip and add all the necessary external requirements to enable a simple hookup to mic and speaker.