Ambiq Micro, DSP Concepts, and Sensory Bring Always-On Voice Control to Portable Devices
Ambiq Micro, a provider of ultra-low power solutions, is partnering with DSP Concepts, a developer of embedded digital signal processing audio solutions and specialist in voice user interface technologies, and Sensory, a provider of embedded artificial intelligence and speech recognition technologies, to launch always-on keyword detect and on-device command phrase recognition for portable consumer products, including smartwatches, earbuds, smart home end devices, health monitors, and wearables.
The partnership will bring together Sensory's TrulyHandsfree and DSP Concepts' Audio Weaver Voice UI with the Apollo family of microcontrollers built on Ambiq Micro's patented Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT). By combining Sensory's Low Power Sound Detector (LPSD) and TrulyHandsfree wake word and command phrase detection with DSP Concepts' quiescent sound detection, beamforming, and noise reduction, Ambiq Micro's Apollo2 microcontroller can aceve highly accurate key phrase detection rates while consuming four times less power. This power and performance efficiency enables multi-microphone beam forming and noise reduction algorithms to run for more than a week using a CR2032 battery.
"We're thrilled to partner with industry leaders DSP Concepts and Sensory to enable energy-efficient, high-quality and seamless interactions for consumers as they increasingly engage with voice-operated appliances," said Aaron Grassian, vice president of marketing and business development at Ambiq Micro, in a statement. "More and more innovative products are embracing voice-enabled user interfaces and, together, we're delivering the ultra-low power capabilities to bring true always-listening and always-on voice control to battery-powered intelligent devices."
"Ambiq Micro's SPOT-enabled devices have given us a platform to showcase the quality of our Audio Weaver Voice UI to focus on the user's commands at ultra-low power levels," said Paul Beckmann, founder and chief technology officer at DSP Concepts, in a statement. "The combination of the power efficiency and audio quality of our technologies is the most important factor in driving a frictionless user experience and a new level of adoption in the market."
"TrulyHandsfree was specifically developed to enable highly-accurate and noise robust wake word and voice key phrase recognition on ultra-low-power applications," said Bernie Brafman, vice president of business development at Sensory, in a statement. "As devices continue to get smaller, so will the batteries within them. We are pleased to team up with Ambiq and DSP Concepts to provide a solution that will enable more companies to add TrulyHandsfree always-listening voice capabilities to their power-constrained applications."