Sensory Unveils Domain Specific Voice Assistant for Smart Appliances

Sensory Unveils Domain Specific Voice Assistant for Smart Appliances

Collaborating with Midea Microwave and Cleaner Appliances (MCA) business unit to preview a microwave oven with natural language user interface at CES 2020, Sensory’s TrulyNatural SDK offers voice control of kitchen appliances without risking user privacy

Picture

Sensory, a Silicon Valley company pioneering AI at the edge, today announced the release of its domain specific assistant for smart appliances – a specialized model of TrulyNatural, the company’s large vocabulary speech recognition and natural language understanding platform, that has been designed for home appliances. This technology will help appliance manufacturers create a new wave of smart kitchen appliances that don’t relay voice requests to the cloud.
Voice adoption in consumer electronics continues to gain significant traction, but as more voice-enabled products powered by cloud-based voice services enter the market, more privacy concerns are uncovered. TrulyNatural is the perfect solution for addressing these consumer concerns, because it enhances products with an extremely intelligent natural language user interface, while keeping voice data private and secure; voice requests never leave the device, nor are they ever stored.

“There are certain products where having a cloud-connected voice assistant capable of playing music, checking the weather and telling you a joke makes sense, but there are countless products where it would be unnecessary,” said Todd Mozer, CEO at Sensory. “TrulyNatural is the perfect solution for device makers that want to create powerful products capable of understanding and responding to spoken commands, but don’t need the added complexity, component costs and potential privacy risks associated with leveraging a cloud-based voice services platform.”

TrulyNatural provides a flexible voice UI that can be integrated into devices of all shapes and sizes. It delivers an ideal user experience for domain-specific applications, such as home/kitchen appliances, vehicle infotainment systems, set-top boxes, home automation, industrial and enterprise applications, mobile apps and more. Designed to run completely on an application processor, all TrulyNatural speech processing is done natively (at the edge), not in the cloud. It enables a safe, secure, consistent, reliable and easy to implement experience for the end-user, free of requiring any extra apps or WIFI to be setup or operational. It can also be paired with Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree wake word technology, giving device makers the ability to use their own desired wake words instead of having to use another company’s or potential competitor’s branded wake word. Sensory’s TrulySecure technology can also be integrated to provide biometric-based security and user control features, allowing homeowners to limit who can use the appliances and/or certain features based on whose speaking to the device.

TrulyNatural currently supports US English, with UK English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish planned for release in 2020. SDK’s are available for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and other leading platforms.

Midea MCA, a global leader in home microwave appliances, is the first customer to adopt this technology into their products. The fruits of this relationship can be experienced at CES 2020, where both companies will be showcasing a new microwave oven capable of understanding naturally spoken requests, without sending a single Bit of data over the internet.

“When it comes to scientific and technological innovation in the home appliances industry Midea is committed to play a leadership role. We firmly believe in ‘consumer-first technology’ and strive to maintain a technological advantage through teamwork and innovation. By teaming up with Sensory we are able to not only modernize the consumer experience offered by our products but do so in a way that addresses the increasingly alarming privacy issue that concerns many consumers worldwide,” said Dr. Scott Sun, Deputy Director of Midea MCA.

View a video demo of Sensory’s Domain Specific Voice Assistant for Smart Appliances embedded in a Midea MCA microwave oven prototype here: https://youtu.be/uB5R5j-QeLM.

Sensory will be showcasing the microwave oven prototype at CES 2020 by appointment only. Journalists interested in seeing the microwave demonstration can request a private meeting with Sensory at the following link: https://email.sensory.com/sensory-at-ces-2020.

Sensory Unveils Cross-Platform Wake Word AI That Supports Multiple Voice Assistants While Maintaining Ideal Performance

Sensory Unveils Cross-Platform Wake Word AI That Supports Multiple Voice Assistants While Maintaining Ideal Performance

Sensory Updates TrulyHandsfree with Capabilities That Align With the Voice Interoperability Initiative Led by Amazon

Picture

Sensory, a leader in embedded voice, vision and biometrics AI announces new capabilities for TrulyHandsfree™, the company’s widely-deployed wake word engine, that enables support for multiple wake words from any combination of leading brands, custom branded wake words, small vocabulary command sets or even user defined wake words where the end user can create their own phrase. This technology supports Amazon and the numerous supporters of the Voice Interoperability Initiative (VII) announced in September and allows brands to get a jumpstart on the development of products that feature multiple simultaneous voice services. “Multiple simultaneous wake words provide the best option for customers,” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in Amazon’s VII press release.
“We are lucky to have worked closely with most of the leaders in voice services to help create products with their wake words embedded. Because of this, we already have all of the data in place to combine multiple models,” said Todd Mozer, CEO of Sensory. “However, everyone in the industry has found that combining two or more wake word models into a product poses a significant challenge in maintaining optimal performance. The new capabilities we added to TrulyHandsfree overcomes some of the accuracy challenges without significantly boosting MIPS and memory requirements.”

Sensory has already collected the data and built deep learned models for “Hey Cortana”, “Alexa”, “OK Google”, “Hey Siri”, “Hi Bixby”, “Xiao-du Xiao-du” and over 2 dozen other assistants. These wake words have been approved for market and are already shipping in real products with proven performance and reliability in ultra-low power applications like wearables and mobile phones, to high-performance applications like vehicles, smart speakers and home appliances.

TrulyHandsfree employs a new technique to enable multiple wake words without linearly increasing the error rates, which has been the main challenge associated with running multiple wake words on one device. With traditional approaches, adding a new wake word meant the sum of the error rates of each individual wake word, but with TrulyHandsfree the accuracy doesn’t degrade as fast, offering support for more wake words with less false accepts and false rejects. “Also, on our roadmap for a 2020 release is multi-wake word adaptation that will allow devices to know who is talking to them and to adapt the voice model to better work with each individual user,” Mozer added.

By appointment only at CES 2020, Sensory will be showcasing TrulyHandsfree supporting multiple wake words for today’s most popular voice assistant platforms. For companies interested in test driving TrulyHandsfree on their products, Sensory offers a free demo app. Contact sales@sensory.com for more information.

About Sensory: 
For over 25 years, Sensory has pioneered and developed groundbreaking applications for machine learning and embedded AI – turning those applications into household technologies. Pioneering the concept of always-listening speech recognition more than a decade ago, Sensory’s flexible wake word, small to large vocabulary speech recognition, and natural language understanding technologies are fueling today’s voice revolution. Additionally, its biometric recognition technologies are making everything from unlocking a device to authenticating users for digital transactions faster, safer and more convenient. Sensory’s technologies are widely deployed in numerous markets, including automotive, home appliances, home entertainment, IoT, mobile phones, wearables and more, and have shipped in over two billion units of leading consumer products and software applications.

IOGEAR Launches Compact USB-C Docking Station for Maximizing Work and Play

IOGEAR Launches Compact USB-C Docking Station for Maximizing Work and Play

Designed for Laptops, Tablets, Smartphones and the Nintendo® Switch, IOGEAR’s Dock Pro 60 USB-C 4K Station with Game+ Mode Connects, Charges, Adds Ports and Expands Viewing to a 4K Display

Picture

IOGEAR, a manufacturer of innovative solutions designed to maximize the capabilities of computing and AV technology investments, today announced the launch of its new Dock Pro™ 60 USB-C 4K Station with Game+ Mode (GUC3C4HP), a mini docking station for portable computing devices and the Nintendo® Switch. Designed with portability in mind, the Dock Pro is an easily packable, ultra-compact system that converts a single USB-C port into a world of possibilities.
By Day, it’s a Dock for Work

Ideal for the avid traveler, the pocket-sized Dock Pro supports a wide variety of mobile computing devices, turning USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 laptops and tablets, Android smartphones, and mobile devices that support Samsung DeX mode into powerful, productive workstations. It supports up to 60 watts of USB-C power delivery pass-through for charging, features an HDMI output for connecting a 4K external display, and adds two USB-A ports for plugging-in a keyboard, mouse and other supported USB peripherals or accessories.

But when the workday is done, it’s a Dock for Play

For gamers that want to enhance their Nintendo Switch gaming experience, the Dock Pro allows them to dock, charge and confidently transform a Nintendo Switch into a big-screen gaming system that enables keyboard and mouse gameplay with supported game titles. Similarly, it allows those that want to extend their Android smartphone’s gaming experience to a larger display and maximize gameplay by integrating keyboard and mouse control.

“Laptops, tablets and smartphones offer immense productivity features that, when paired with the right docking station that allows for the use of a larger display and standard peripherals, can be amplified to rival the capabilities of modern workstations,” said Joseph Zheng, Director of Product Management, IOGEAR. “Our new Dock Pro certainly accomplishes this for modern computing devices, but expands on it by fully supporting the Nintendo Switch. Dock Pro lets users maximize their gaming experience by putting their games on a bigger screen, while also adding keyboard and mouse control for popular game titles.”

Dock Pro is available for $79.99 at Amazon.com.

For more information on IOGEAR’s portfolio of award-winning connectivity products and solutions, please visit www.iogear.com and follow the company on TwitterLinkedInFacebookInstagram and YouTube.

About IOGEAR
IOGEAR, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., manufactures innovative information technology products for consumers and organizations of varying sizes that are designed to help integrate technologies in everyday life, share resources and decrease clutter at home, in business, and on-the-go. IOGEAR meets a variety of user needs by offering a broad range of solutions including: KVMs, AV & Digital Home, Computer Accessories, Networking, Mobility and Gaming. IOGEAR distributes throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia.
©2019 IOGEAR. All rights reserved. IOGEAR and the IOGEAR logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of IOGEAR. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.