Moshi Introduces IVR Clock

Moshi, a division of SnS International, today released its Interactive Voice Recognition Alarm Clock featuring TimeSet technology to retailers everywhere.

“The response has been great,” says Nick Lavidge, director of product development at Moshi. “The return percentage is zero, which just confirms how good our technology is and how well it’s been working, especially in this clock interface. And it gives us much confidence for the future.”

The clock—which debuted a month ago after almost a year in production—is the first touch-free clock that allows users to set both time and alarm by voice command. Users initiate voice commands to the clock by saying Hello Moshi. The clock responds with, Command Please. Using interactive voice recognition technology, the clock carries out instructions to 12 different commands.

The clock’s interactive voice recognition technology relies on a combination of Neural Net and HMM Phonetic Speaker-Independent Recognition software.   

“It’s basically a hybrid system which has really never been used before,” Lavidge says. “It kind of takes the old [interactive voice recognition] technology and blends it with the new. And our goal was that we wanted to take the pros from both of them and help eliminate the cons by overlapping them."

This hybrid provides for large vocabulary recognition that is accurate, noise robust, and capable of accommodating many different accents. Each clock requires no additional programming after purchase.

The clock also boasts advanced features like continuous word and phrase spotting that eliminate the limitations of “discrete word command-and-control," creating a more natural user interface.

According to Lavidge, the new clock is just the first of many products—including a new line of “bigger and better” clocks—using this technology that Moshi plans to launch in accordance with the company motto: comfort through innovation. “As far as our new releases, we’re looking to expand into all different home appliances,” Lavidge says. “We realized we had some great technology that we could apply to home appliances, and so our clock is kind of our first entry point into that.”