Fluent.ai Partners with Knowles to Offer Voice in Connected Appliances
Fluent.ai, a provider of embedded speech recognition solutions, has expanded its partnership with Knowles, a provider of advanced micro-acoustic microphones, speakers, audio processing, capacitors, and radio frequency products, to deliver fully offline multilingual/multi-accent voice control for washing machines and other home appliances.
"The use-case possibilities are endless with our joint solution for embedded voice control with Fluent.ai. From our original partnership integrating our technology into TWS earbuds, we have since evolved it to the control of smart home appliances. The current experience of controlling your appliances with voice using a smart speaker offers a poor customer experience, one which is difficult to install and has latency as the appliances have to wait while the voice command makes its round trip to cloud and back. Moving the audio processing to the edge embedded in white goods solves this to create an easy-to-use and responsive voice interface. Fluent's technology helps us fit voice UI into a cost-effective module with a large library of voice commands and phrases to control white good appliances," said Mehul Kochar, senior director of business development for audio solutions at Knowles, in a statement.
Fluent.ai's speech-to-intent technology leverages natural and flexible voice commands to trigger appliance actions. Its new reference design allows users to activate 39 washing machine settings through 472 unique voice command phrasing options without the need for a cloud-based voice assistant.
The software resides locally on Knowles' AISonic Audio Edge Processor IA8201, which does not use data from the cloud.
"We are excited to grow our partnership with Knowles, a global leader in audio solutions, and expand the use of our combined technology to white goods appliances," said Probal Lala, CEO of Fluent.ai, in a statement. "Fluent's software is noise-robust, which is key for filtering through loud background noise of appliances, such as washing machines, dishwashers, kitchen range hoods, and more. Our embedded technology enables users of any language or accent to command appliance tasks hands-free and without the need for an internet connection. We expect this collaboration will also significantly reduce hardware BOM costs for OEMs due to the elimination of components required for cloud-based voice recognition solutions."
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