Voice control

Spoken dialog in human-machine interfaces reaches a whole new level of quality when the algorithm is sensitive to regional distinctions and preferences. An example is the general phrase “bear left” in English. In German, a further expression exists to describe an additional variation of a directional change that lies between “straight on” and “turn left”, namely, “halb links” (literally “half left”). But translating this phrase directly simply would not make sense.

Saying what you want and however you want to say it. One of the most important disciplines in the development of a voice control system is natural language understanding (NLU). The system is no longer merely controlled using set commands that the driver first has to make an effort to learn. Bosch uses state-of-the-art speech recognition technology that processes natural sentence structures and that can reliably handle speech impediments and accents.

Bosch voice control systems listen and obey. Conventional systems prompt you when you are supposed to speak, i.e. once they have spoken, they beep to indicate that you are only now permitted to respond. But the state-of-the-art voice control systems from Bosch let you interrupt whenever you want. And then they do what they are supposed to do: listen.

A common characteristic of a system that listens is that you must address it by its name before you start talking to it. You may already be familiar with this from your smartphone: “hey ... (name that the manufacturer has given the system)”. But with the Bosch voice control system, you choose a name for it yourself. Call your car whatever you like. It listens and obeys.

User convenience and driving safety are increased still further when the Bosch voice control system is connected to other systems. So, for example, if you say, “take me to my next appointment”, the system automatically searches your calendar for the scheduled time and the location of the appointment. And when you want to call “Paul” from your contacts, the system will prioritize the contacts you use most often and ask you: “I have found 5 contacts called Paul. Do you want to call Paul Stevenson?”.

The smaller the world becomes, the more sophisticated are the tasks that a speech recognition system has to handle. An example is cross-border road traffic in Europe. Drivers must, for instance, be able to use their English speech recognition system to input destination addresses in France in French without first having to change anything manually.

For instance: “Navigate to Deux Rue Leberthon Bordeaux”. The Bosch spoken dialog system comes with capabilities for multilingual voice destination input already built in.