The RIM subsidiary, QNX Software Systems continues to surprise car enthusiasts with the introduction of new capabilities to its QNX CAR application platform. In a bid to make today’s connected cars more intuitive, the company has now come up with an all-new, powerful framework that enables a car’s speech recognition systems to understand a speaker's intent.

The new QNX Intent Framework will enable the car makers to incorporate more sophisticated and connected infotainment systems into their future car designs. The latest innovation is expected to accelerate the adoption of speech recognition across a broad range of vehicles.

As a component of the QNX CAR application platform, the framework will allow in-car applications to access AT&T (News - Alert) Watson speech recognition technology to derive meaning from the driver's spoken words. This next generation cloud-based speech engine facilitates more advanced natural language understanding and automatic speech recognition. The capabilities can be used to perform a variety of tasks including creation of calendar appointments, dictating e-mail or text messages and setting complex navigation destinations. The engine even enables the in-car applications to perform general Internet searches.

The specialty of this multimodal and multilingual speech engine is its ability to provide extremely high-quality recognition with low latency.

In a news statement, QNX explained the intent determination process, which starts right at the server level. At the server, the AT&T Watson speech engine begins to analyze words of the driver’s speech and fits them to known patterns. The analysis is transferred from the cloud to the car, where the in-vehicle intent engine from QNX takes over. The remainder of speech analysis is performed by QNX’ intent engine and dictates the in-car application act accordingly.

The new QNX framework tends to share the workload across client and server, making it beneficial both for the auto makers and the end-users. It tends to create a system, where the server-side analysis is provided by AT&T Watson and client-side analysis is performed by QNX. The system is designed to support complex scenarios, and gives the car makers greater flexibility to incorporate a variety of car applications in-car applications featuring regional aspects or personal tastes.

“Enabling natural, intuitive, user experiences is fundamental to our vision of the connected vehicle, and providing our automotive customers with the tools to create those experiences is fundamental to our product strategy. By providing a framework that enables our customers to take greater advantage of AT&T's phenomenal speech engine, the new intent system should help accelerate the adoption of speech recognition across a broad range of vehicles,” director of strategic alliances at QNX Software Systems Linda Campbell noted in a statement.

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