A few years ago, speech recognition was primarily associated with contact centers and other such assistive applications, and it was perhaps unthinkable that it could fit in elsewhere. However, today voice recognition technologies have much broader applications than before. In fact, one research company considers it important enough to add to its offerings.
Titled "Innovations in Gesture and Speech Recognition for Consumer Electronics (Technical Insights)," the report from Research and Markets highlights how recent advances in allied software and hardware technologies have made it possible to integrate speech and gesture into everyday appliances.
The report focuses on the consumer electronics industry and emphasizes the need to cater to a wide variety of users that utilize products ranging from mobile phones to home smart systems where the speech and gesture technologies will find useful application.
Some banks are expected to use voice recognition technology in the future, allowing mobile banking customers to transfer funds using the bank’s smartphone application. The automotive, airlines and healthcare industry have apps in place that use speech recognition. And that’s not all.
Samsung (News - Alert)'s Smart Interaction, which controls smart TVS with gestures, Apple’s Personal assistant Siri, Microsoft’s Kinect, voice Recognition for touchless biometrics, the creative Senz3D interactive gesture camera -- to name a few -- all exemplify how disruptive the speech and gesture-recognition landscape has been.
What has brought about this marvelous change? Smarter computing technologies and the arrival of smartphones and tablets that support speech technologies have largely been responsible for the added impetus to the consumer electronics industry. Hence, the report notes that this fact should be kept in mind while the consumer industry focuses on developing products. After all, the extent to which application value is improved for end users will determine how far this industry will grow.
Although innovation is the key to attract users, technology capabilities and cost should be balanced in such a way that original equipment manufacturers can succeed by catering to mass deployment. High quality performance, low -power consumption and moderate pricing would attract users.
Also, speech and gesture-control technologies should be software/hardware agnostic. Only then can they be integrated smoothly with existing and future consumer electronic devices.
It’s a long road ahead and not an easy one; but there’s no doubt that we’re in for an exciting time. What’s next? A voice driven car or a gesture-driven airplane ?
Edited by Rory J. Thompson