CEVA Introduces VUI Solution for TI SimpleLink Wi-Fi Wireless MCUs

CEVA, a licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies and co-creation solutions, has made its WhisPro speech recognition and control software available to support designs using the Texas Instruments SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3235x wireless multipoint control unit (MCU) family. The WhisPro Software Development Kit (SDK) allows full customization of wake words and voice commands and runs entirely on-device without the need for a network connection.

Through this collaboration with Texas Instruments, engineers using the CC3235x wireless MCU can add speech recognition capabilities to IoT devices using the WhisPro SDK, such as wake words and speech commands. WhisPro can support multiple wake words in parallel, including standard AI assistants (such as Alexa) and custom wake words, in various languages. WhisPro can support up to 30 tailored commands and require as little as 50 kilobytes determined by the compute resources and accuracy tradeoffs. The WhisPro engine available for TI's CC3235x is optimized for the Arm Cortex-M4 processor, offering extremely low latency and consuming absolute minimal power.

"Across the entire IoT landscape, voice control is becoming a must-have feature for many devices and applications, from wearables to white goods. Our collaboration with CEVA ensures engineers using our proven and reliable SimpleLink Wi-Fi wireless MCUs have access to a voice user interface to address these exciting use cases," said Naomi Heller, manager of Wi-Fi connectivity products at TI, in a statement.

"We're delighted to announce our work with Texas Instruments, a powerhouse in the semiconductor industry, to make our WhisPro speech recognition software available for its wireless MCU family. With exceptional performance and the capability to customize the model to each customer's requirements, the hardware offering from TI when paired with our software will enable our mutual customers to deliver high-performance, cost-efficient solutions for voice-enabled IoT endpoints and devices," said Chad Lucien, vice president and general manager of the sensing and audio business unit at CEVA, in a statement.