Nuance Introduces Natural Language Speech Suite for Navigation & Automotive Vendors
Turn-key Embedded Speech Applications Deliver Advanced Capabilities, Speed Time to Market and Lower Development Costs for OEM Customers
CeBIT, Hanover, March 5, 2008 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading supplier of speech and imaging solutions, today announced a new automotive Natural Language Speech Suite consisting of speech recognition, improved text-to-speech and a turn-key package for voice destination entry. The suite allows vendors and OEM customers to speed the implementation of new models and to increase usability by offering a more natural user interface.
The new offering extends Nuance® Automotive to the next generation of automotive speech solutions to deliver direct, hands-free access to the device’s most-used navigation functions, making the system easier to operate. Today, Nuance Automotive solutions can be found worldwide in more than five million cars, representing more than 100 models from all major car manufacturers, including Mercedes, Fiat and Ford. Nearly all of the portable navigation device manufacturers, including Tom Tom, Magellan, Medion and Falk are already delivering improved safety and ease of use for the automotive consumer by using Nuance speech recognition to enable voice destination entry or speech synthesis for voice guidance.
Arnd Weil, General Manager, Automotive and PND at Nuance, said: “Embedded speech technology solutions have shown significant evolution during the last couple of years, several new PND models with voice destination entry using Nuance speech were launched the past year.. However, there are still certain limitations to overcome including the increasing number of functions of PNDs or the desire for more natural control capabilities. The next generation of embedded speech recognition systems will largely address these problems by introducing new techniques which allow a more natural speech input.”
Today, Nuance extends its current portfolio with new automotive offerings including:
- Nuance VoCon 3200 NLU (Natural Language Understanding)
The well established VoCon 3200 engine comes now with new search algorithms that allow one-shot, multi-slot entry (e.g. one-shot address entry) in one utterance. Instead of walking through a multi-step dialog the user can enter the address in one shot saying: “Navigate to London, 10, Downing Street”, thus decreasing the number of dialogue steps and improving the user experience. By using domain specific statistical language models (SLM) the systems are no longer restricted to understanding a defined number of grammars, but allow free form input with infinite number of variations. The user can phrase his or her request in any desired way, be it commands or a complete sentence in spontaneous, natural language.
- Nuance Navigation Package Voice Destination Entry
Voice destination entry has evolved to a key differentiating feature in new personal navigation devices. The goal of the application package for navigation is to simplify and speed up the integration of Voice Destination Entry, a special form of large vocabulary recognition for navigation devices. Special attention has been given to the platform limitations on typical mobile navigation devices, whether it is a dedicated PND device or phone based navigation software. The navigation package provides an implementation base package for city and street names, zip code and house number entry. The goal is to accelerate the implementation and to assure good user experience and short time-to-market. The navigation package for voice destination entry is available in US-English, UK-English, French and German. Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Australian English will be available by end of March.
- Nuance Vocalizer for Automotive
Nuance Vocalizer for Automotive is a TTS solution package that offers high quality speech output on all navigation and automotive HMI applications. Nuance Vocalizer for Automotive combines proven technology from RealSpeak Solo with recent technology innovations to offer a broad range of deployment options. As a result, Nuance Vocalizer for Automotive can be scaled to meet requirements of standard PND devices, baseline telematics platforms as well as high-end in-car HMI systems.
Applications for the technology range from verbal turn-by-turn directions for navigation applications to detailed traffic information or travel guides, but also SMS or email readout or spoken caller ID. The new TTS solution adds seamless integration of prompts and TTS slots typically required in navigation applications. Combined with Nuance’s outstanding prompt creation and localization service and its unique prompt tuning tools, Vocalizer for Automotive is by far the most flexible TTS solution in the market. Extended multilingual support and the availability of the widest language and voice portfolio are yet more arguments that make Nuance Vocalizer for Automotive the best choice for all speech output requirements in automotive. Nuance Vocalizer is available in more than 20 languages today.
Nuance will demonstrate its latest deployments of speech-enabled portable navigation devices at CeBIT 2008 in the Nuance booth (hall 15, stand D29). For further information on Nuance’s participation at CeBIT 2008 Hannover please visit: http://www.nuance.com/Cebit2008/
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance (Nasdaq: NUAN) is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: www.nuance.com
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