Today's News by Jack Nerad for Driving Today

Connectivity by Voice

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Connectivity is great as long as it doesn’t interfere with your key task behind the wheel: driving your car safely.

One way to limit distraction is via voice commands.

Now, with the new Nuance Voice Control Automotive platform, drivers can use today’s most popular connected services safely. Offering one-button access to onboard and connected functions, the system works with simple, easy voice commands based on the popular Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech-recognition technology.

“The communication-based applications that use the Internet are currently the most useful for car use,” said Egil Juliussen, who holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and is a principal analyst and fellow at iSuppli. “This is due to the user interface need for communication applications, which can be served by speech recognition and text-to-speech.”

The Nuance system allows drivers to access dynamic real-time information and services, including text messaging and email, while keeping their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. It also allows interaction with such social networks as Twitter and Facebook and enables drivers to access a wide variety of news, weather and information services, including traffic updates, the latest sports scores, stock prices, movie theater locations and film listings. 

Additionally, just by asking, you can obtain dining options in your area or point of destination, plus price comparisons for hotels and fuel. The system also allows drivers to use speech for controlling in-vehicle systems like mobile phones, and entertainment and navigation devices. So far, no voice control for our kids, though.

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