NAVIGON Speech-Enables Navigation Systems on PDA Devices

NAVIGON GmbH, a provider of mobile navigation solutions, selected ScanSoft's VoCon 3200 Embedded Development System 2.0 to speech-enable MobileNavigator 5, the latest release of NAVIGON's navigation software. VoCon 3200 Embedded Development System 2.0 is a development suite that adds speech recognition to a variety of automotive, mobile and other embedded or PC-based applications. MobileNavigator software for PDA devices will be available as a modular package system consisting of software and map data for more than 27 countries in Europe and will be sold with Medion PDAs.

"The integrated speech recognition in MobileNavigator 4 was so well received that we extended its integration in our latest release, MobileNavigator 5. The product enables users to comfortably and safely access route information and directions for home, work or to the airport while on the road," said Florian Singer, executive director, marketing and PR NAVIGON GmbH. "ScanSoft's speech recognition solutions offer outstanding quality, and add an important element of comfort and usability for our customers."

The new program is available as a Bluetooth variant with or without automatic traffic-jam avoidance and provides NAVTECH map data for 27 European countries, North America and the Gulf region (GCC). A revised user interface equipped with new features is at the heart of the MobileNavigator 5 and makes the system easier, more intuitive and faster to use.

VoCon 3200 Embedded Development System 2.0 includes libraries for WinCE v4.2 / PocketPC 2003 to allow integration into PDA-based applications and comes with an API description, sample program code and demo applications.

Navigon's MobileNavigator uses a speaker-dependent recognition algorithm implemented in VoCon 3200 2.0. Users can add a speaker-dependent voice tag to a destination. VoCon 3200 supports training the voice tags in a quiet environment or in a stopped car and entering a voice destination in a noisy environment, i.e. - while driving. VoCon 3200 uses the existing acoustic models for the speaker-dependent user words and makes use of ScanSoft's automotive speech databases recorded in car environments covering a range of different car models and driving conditions.