[September 17, 2003] Fonix And Seiko Epson Introduce Speech Rec And TTs Platform Fonix Corporation, an international provider of leading speech interface solutions, and Seiko Epson Corporation (Epson), worldwide provider of information-related equipment, introduce a speech recognition (SR) and text-to-speech (TTS) platform that allows users to interact with embedded systems - simply by speaking naturally. Electronic devices are becoming more mobile, feature-rich and complex, while becoming ever smaller. This challenges manufacturers to create an effective user-interface to operate these applications. Speech command and control of electronic systems (e.g. car navigation, multi-media, mobile phones or appliances) provides the solution. The trends in device markets are driving increasing demand from customers and partners for convenient, natural user-interfaces, says Thomas A. Murdock, Fonix CEO. Fonix has been ahead of the trends by anticipating need and creating standardized solutions for key markets. Our partnership with Epson makes our solutions market ready for current and future design wins. Fonix anticipates revenue opportunities through generation of royalty fees, product and technology licenses, product sales, non-recurring engineering fees and support agreements. The architecture and features of the Epson S1C33 Family make it a perfect match for the Fonix technologies. These two technologies combined provide the best speech solution for a wide variety of embedded devices, says Hirabayashi Yasuhisa, general manager of Seiko Epson IC Marketing Department. The best speech recognition in the world with the best microcontrollers in their class - Fonix SR and Epson's S1C33 family. With Fonix speech solutions, you can easily integrate SR and TTS onto embedded products such as: - Automotive multimedia systems - Mobile phones and smartphones - PDAs - Games and toys - Data collection devices - Language learning and assistive devices - Appliances and other consumer devices This is a strategic market opportunity for Fonix, says Rolf-Juergen Bruess, Fonix International president. With speech bundled directly on the microcontroller, the development cycle is shortened, which decreases the integration cost and significantly decreases the time-to-market for device manufacturers. Utilizing Fonix speech solutions, Epson S1C33 32-bit, low-power, high-performance microcontrollers deliver user-independent speech recognition and enable simultaneous speech recognition and voice output (text-to-speech) with as little as 512KB ROM and 1MB RAM. Since no user training is required by the speech recognition, applications can be used out-of-the-box with very high recognition accuracy. Epson provides a wide variety of application evaluation kits that include an S1C33 development board. The type of board depends upon the chip, which depends upon the desired functions required by the end-user. Fonix provides an embedded SR/TTS builder, which creates a tiered (tree-like) menu structure that rapidly prototypes a speech recognition menu that can include text-to-speech or wave sound output for prompts and confirmations. Couple this with the recently announced Fonix embedded application solution for Epson S1C33 family of chips, and developers can prototype applications on the PC, download them onto the evaluation board, and test in a matter of minutes. The S1C33 embedded speech application solution is currently available and may be obtained by contacting a worldwide Epson representative. 32-bit Microcomputers S1C33 Family is Epson's original 32-bit RISC CPU. The product incorporates peripheral functions in abundance, including rapid DMA, multi-channel SIO, programmable timer, PLL and pre-scaler. Features of fast operation and extremely low power consumption qualify this family for application to OA equipment such as printers and portable equipment, including PDAs and toys. In addition, as this family incorporates A/D converter and PWM timer, its combination with middleware provides digital signal processing such as voice processing. Epson's S1C33 microcontrollers are optimised for battery-driven applications and feature high-performance operation while maintaining low-power consumption. For multimedia applications, the microcontroller provides DSP functionality using the internal multiplication and accumulation hardware. The built-in 10-bit A/D converter enables the speech recognition and speech synthesis systems. The development environment for the S1C33 Family includes the Workbench33 (a graphical user interface), a C compiler and Assembler and an In-Circuit-Debugger. Various evaluation and expansion boards for audio in/output, compact flash interfacing, memory extension and debugging are also available. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]