Nuance Adds More Intelligence to Dragon Drive
Nuance Communications has added always-listening multipassenger communication, artificial intelligence-enabled text messaging, and additional features for driver personalization, to its Dragon Drive Automotive Assistant in-car personal assistant system.
Dragon Drive, which leverages contextual and situational data from the car and the driver to deliver an assistant that can proactively suggest navigation routes, points of interest, music, and more, now extends those capabilities to all passengers in the car—not simply the driver. With its multipassenger interaction solution, the in-car assistant can communicate with multiple people in the car, leveraging Nuance's wake-up word technology and identifying passengers with voice biometrics.
Nuance's multipassenger interaction solution is currently shipping in 2016 and 2017 BMW vehicles.
Nuance also this week introduced advanced AI-enabled text messaging, where the automotive assistant can understand the context of incoming messages and proactively suggest responses or take action based on their contents. For example, if a driver receives the message at 1:30 p.m., "Let's meet at Michigan Central Station at 2:15," the Automotive Assistant can interpret the details and ask the driver if he would like to navigate to Michigan Central Station, send a reply, and add a meeting to the calendar.
Nuance's AI-enabled text messaging also inserts additional context and information into outgoing messages dictated through the system. For instance, the driver might say "Tell Rebecca when I will arrive," and the assistant will send a message to Rebecca stating "I will arrive at 2:20 p.m." The assistant knows based on the distance and navigation the expected arrival time and understands which Rebecca to contact based on previous messaging exchanges or frequency of contact. Frequent contacts and their preferred contact details (mobile versus office or home) are learned by the Automotive Assistant over time. Corrections acan be made with Dragon Drive's voice barge-in technology that allows drivers to interrupt the assistant at any time.
Nuance Dragon Drive also lets automakers update existing infotainment systems over the air with plug-ins that leverage the Nuance Mix NLU development platform.
"Automakers are redefining innovation in the [human-machine interface] with conversational automotive assistants that bring artificial intelligence behind the wheel," said Arnd Weil, senior vice president of automotive at Nuance Mobile, in a statement. "These latest enhancements to our Dragon Drive platform bring the automotive assistant experience beyond the driver's seat, giving passengers the ability to access content and services. This shared automotive assistant concept is critical as we enter the next era of transportation, where autonomous vehicles and shared driving services begin to take shape across smart cities. And while there will always be drivers, we'll see the number of autonomous and shared vehicle passengers rise, giving way to more services and capabilities that automotive assistants can quickly access and deliver."
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