Sybase Expands into Telematics and Embedded Devices

Sybase iAnywhere is enhancing its presence in the telematics and embedded devices markets by enabling embedded applications to provide intelligent user interfaces and context-aware user interactions. Extending the company's Answers Anywhere technology, Sybase iAnywhere now offers a natural language engine that targets the memory-constrained world of embedded devices.

The new Answers Anywhere functionality enables developers to improve the user experience of resource-constrained devices that otherwise would have limited user interface capabilities.

"Traditionally when using embedded applications, for example embedded speech recognition, users have to comply with the systems interface restrictions," said Babak Hodjat, senior director of engineering at Sybase iAnywhere. "Applying embedded capabilities to our natural language engine takes that burden off of the user, enabling a free-form, context-aware dialogue. Now, instead of following tedious voice menus to obtain traffic information from the in-car telematics system, a user can simply say 'I'm going to Comerica Park. Any traffic problems?'"

"We're excited about the new possibilities that Sybase iAnywhere brings to the development and deployment of embedded devices," said Naoki Hashimoto, senior manager, Software Development Group, at the Japan-based NEC Infrontia Corp. "A natural language engine for embedded environments will enable developers to create applications with superior user interfaces, which in turn will deliver a greatly improved customer experience."

New Answers Anywhere functionality for telematics and embedded devices includes:

A Java-based, graphics-oriented development tool for generating an agent network model of the natural language application,

Automatic C++ code generator optimized for size and performance in embedded applications,

Support for embedded systems running Windows CE or the QNX operating systems, and

Adaptive, agent-oriented software architecture incorporating 22 natural language patents.