Audi’s Virtual Cockpit enables intuitive user interactions with intelligent voice and natural language understanding technologies.

Are you talking back to me?

Oct. 13, 2014
A new technology allows a driver to engage in a more conversational dialogue with a car.

Technological advances – big and small – never cease to amaze me.

I was impressed when Apple developed Siri – a speech-recognition "personal assistant" that is built into its iPhones.

Now, this type of technology is being evolved into automobiles.

Earlier this month, at the Paris (France) Motor Show, Elektrobit and Nuance unveiled the integration of voice and natural language understanding (NLU) technology as part of the Virtual Cockpit in the new Audi TT Roadster.

The technology allows a driver to engage in a more natural, conversational dialogue with Audi’s infotainment and navigation capabilities, in the same way you would talk to a friend. With intuitive voice commands, drivers and passengers can control the system’s menu, phone, tuner, media and navigation features through everyday speech, without having to stick to defined commands.

With NLU, the infotainment system understands the sense of naturally spoken sentences like “Where is the next gas station on our way?” or “Could you please find the nearest restaurant?”

“Drivers and passengers will be able to experience an even more consistent, natural speech dialogue with incredibly accurate speech recognition and text-to-speech that has been optimized for the automotive environment,” according to officials with Elektrobit and Nuance. “The result is a smarter, safer, in-car experience that allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road, and hands on the wheel.”

The Virtual Cockpit is said to be a “milestone for HMI (human machine interface) development and sets the stage for a new industry standard.”

The NLU system is embedded in Audi’s Virtual Cockpit, “a new HMI concept that enables easier and more intuitive user interaction,” say officials with the automobile manufacturer. Speech dialog systems without NLU, on the other hand, lead the user through a long dialog of questions and answers, and require the user to stick to specific words and phrases.

I await the next breakthrough in human machine interface.

Have any thoughts on what that might be?

About the Author

David A. Kolman | Contributor - Fleet Maintenance

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