Nuance Launches Next-Generation Dragon Drive
Nuance Communications has released its new Dragon Drive connected car platform, which now features new content and application services, combining Nuance's voice, natural language understanding (NLU), and personal assistant capabilities to create a customizable content delivery platform.
Dragon Drive Speech is Nuance's automotive-grade natural language voice platform that lets people speak to dictate text messages and email, as well as access and control any application or service embedded in the vehicle or in the cloud. Dragon Drive Speech now also lets people check the weather, search and navigate to points of interest, manage their calendars, update social media stats, and search for music in the car or streaming from connected radio services.
The expanded Dragon Drive platform is available in 12 languages: U.S. and U.K. English, Canadian and European French, American and European Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
Dragon Drive is comprised of the following three key components:
- Dragon Drive Connect is Nuance's new content delivery and user management service that integrates leading content services and applications that have been optimized for in-car use. It already includes content from Yelp, Infogroup, Slacker Radio, TuneIn Radio, Deezer, Rdio, AccuWeather, OPIS/ Gas Buddy, Xignite, STATS, INRIX, TomTom, West World Media's Cinema-Source, MovieTickets.com, Reuters, Twitter, Facebook, and others.
- Dragon Drive Connect and its Transform Engine allows automakers to optimize and integrate content services into the car, and conduct over-the-air updates to a Dragon Drive system. This capability allows apps to work without interruption when APIs or app updates occur and give consumers access to current apps and services over the ownership lifetime of a car.
- Dragon Drive Link manages cross-platform connectivity between the vehicle and smartphones, carrying in-progress app interactions on smartphones directly into the in-car systems. For instance, people can enter destination details on their Dragon Drive navigation smartphone apps, which then automatically become available via the app in the head unit. Dragon Drive Link automatically authenticates drivers and their user profile information for apps and services once they enter the car.
"Dragon Drive is evolving beyond voice to include Dragon Drive Connect and Dragon Drive Link, marking a significant expansion of our automotive business with fully customizable content and app delivery services," said Arnd Weil, vice president and general manager of automotive at Nuance Mobile, in a statement. "Dragon Drive is a powerful combination of connected infotainment technologies that gives automakers incredible flexibility and freedom in how they design and develop their own branded connected car experience."
"Going forward cars will be connected to content and services. However, automotive manufacturers often need to engage multiple parties to create a compelling connected car platform for content and applications, for voice and HMI, and for connectivity capabilities," said Chris Schreiner, director of automotive consumer insights at Strategy Analytics, in a statement. "By combining a content and applications services platform with its leading voice and NLU capabilities, Nuance is simplifying the connected car integration for automakers with access to all of the customizable components they require."
Nuance today also announced the availability of its Dragon Drive Speech SDK to allow developers to integrate both embedded and connected voice as part of their custom applications. Dragon Drive SDK features Nuance voice recognition, text-to-speech, speech signal enhancement, and natural language technology supporting 12 languages across North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
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