Conexant Brings Nuance's Capabilities to Smart TVs and Home Appliances
Conexant Systems has partnered with Nuance to integrate Nuance Wake-Up-Word technology into its voice input processors. Nuance's low-power, speech recognition engine, or "wake-up-word" technology, coupled with Conexant's technology enables appliances to wake up with a voice command even while they are powered off.
The integration offers a highly accurate, robust way to control televisions and other smart home appliances, even in distant speaker or far-field conditions, where the user is not close to the device.
Conexant offers far-field voice input processing chip solutions capable of functioning at a distance of more than 16 feet. The partnership with Nuance is significant as voice interfaces continue to grow in popularity in a variety of smart home appliances, mobile devices, gaming consoles, automobiles, and wearable computing—creating a world of intelligent systems that listen, understand, and engage on a human level.
"It's important to understand that when we talk about far-field...conditions, we mean that users can use their voice as a natural extension of the user interface from across the room—not just an arm's length away," said Saleel Awsare, Conexant vice president and general manager, in a statement. "In the future, Conexant's audio solutions will enable voice control of everything from tablets to home appliances, even at a distance."
Conexant audio processors, combined with Nuance Wake-Up-Word technology, create context-aware, voice-enabled devices. Additionally, the solution meets worldwide energy conservation requirements due to its low-power state. Nuance Wake-Up-Word technology consists of speech recognition, natural language understanding, and a content ecosystem of Nuance Cloud Services that enable manufacturers, service providers, carriers, and developers to create unique mobile experiences across devices and platforms, and in more than 40 languages.
"Our partnership with Conexant is particularly exciting because we share a vision where people can connect with their devices on their own terms and, ultimately, on a more a human level," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance's Mobile Division, in a statement.
Current voice processing solutions are optimized for phones being held within a few centimeters of the user's mouth (near-field conditions). Today, people communicate through and control a broader range of connected devices, where the device will not likely be held close to the user's mouth and in environments where the surrounding noise level may be high. In situations where traditional near-field voice processing solutions fail, Conexant's AudioSmart far-field voice processing solution mitigates the effects of these challenging conditions and enables the clear voice communication and accurate speech control that users expect, the company said.