By The Siri voice assistant has been so successful that people now expect to get this technology on their cars as well. This shouldn’t be that complicated since the speech recognition technology is already available on several infointainment systems (like GM’s IntelliLink and Ford’s Sync).
According to Detroit Free Press, the speech recognition technology will be used with cars, too from next year on. The report says that Nuance, the speech-recognition company, stated that there’s a car maker which plans to integrate this technology into its vehicles in 2012.
It is believed that this system will allow drivers to make natural-language requests in their cars. This way, the driver will have the possibility to initiate different tasks.
Even if there are cars that come with speech recognition systems, these are only capable of supporting 50-60 terse voice commands. The exception is Ford’s Sync that comes with 10,000 voice commands.
For many of us even these 10,000 seem not to be sufficient. Moreover, you have to know the address of your destination and you have to enter it manually in the case of the navigation systems that exist now.
With Siri now on the market, it should be easier for car makers to integrate this technology in their vehicles. They should be thankful to Apple for this. Nuance said that there will be at least one car manufacturer to integrate advanced voice commands in its vehicles.
Still, things are a little more complicated when it comes to speech recognition and cars. That’s because car manufacturers will have to take into account different factors like the necessity to provide drivers with navigation and directions in a way that doesn’t rely on mobile networks for data connections.
The name of the manufacturer that will break the ice hasn’t been revealed but there are sources claiming that Mercedes-Benz will be coming with something like this in 2012. Would it be the car maker Nuance is taking about?
Source: Cnet