NeoSpeech and Automation Intelligence Give Home Automation a Voice

AUSTIN, TX AND FREMONT, CA - Automation Intelligence, an engineering consulting firm that designs and builds electronic architectures for home automation, announced it has selected NeoSpeech, a provider of voice-enabled solutions for hand-held, desktop and network/server applications, as its exclusive provider of voice systems for high-end homes. As part of the agreement, Automation Intelligence will integrate NeoSpeech's Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine, VoiceText™, with telecommunications, data, security, environmental and life-safety subsystems within its client homes. The resulting systems will enable the homes' audio-visual, access control, security, telephone, and data systems to "speak" to the homes' occupants. "We evaluated a number of TTS engines, but NeoSpeech's was by far the most lifelike," said Automation Intelligence CEO J. Rand Arnold. "Our clients retain us because they are looking for the best that technology has to offer. Automation Intelligence's tag line is 'Touch Tomorrow Today'. The voices created by most TTS engines sound more like yesterday's technology than tomorrow's. They are robotic at best. NeoSpeech's TTS engine was crystal clear and sounded like a friendly assistant." Automation Intelligence's Fusion™ architecture creates a converged wired and wireless audio-video, telecommunication, data and automation network within the home. By integrating NeoSpeech's VoiceText software solution into the Fusion system, occupants receive voice alerts in lieu of traditional sounds such as the telephone ringing, the doorbell chiming, or the smoke alarm going off. For example, an inbound caller might be asked to state his name, then "press 1 for John or press 2 for Lynne". John and Lynne would then be informed over the speaker system that there is a phone call for Lynne from Diane, which she can then choose to pick up or decline answering. "Automation Intelligence is ahead-of-the-curve in using speech technology to design and deploy very friendly, intuitive in-home automation systems," said NeoSpeech CEO Lin Chase. "We are pleased to see our Text-to-Speech technology being used in such an innovative and useful way to enhance people's lifestyles." NeoSpeech's VoiceText generates extremely natural-sounding voices from text input and can be easily configured to support a variety of embedded, desktop and network/server applications. VoiceText's natural-sounding voices - available in US English, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese - can process any size or type of text, from simple driving directions to complete news stories to personal e-mail, delivering the highest accuracy and quality available.