New technology developed by Ford and Nuance bring MyFord Touch driver connect technology to Ford vehicles. It is now easier to control your vehicle using only your voice. They have increased the number of first-level commands from 100 to 10,000. This makes it easier to control your vehicle using fewer steps and more natural language.
Nuance adds more advanced recognition abilities to SYNC, which allows you to use simple phrases like “Call John Smith,” “Find ice cream,” or “Add a phone.” This is how the number of steps required to complete commands is decreased, by increasing the natural language capabilities.
Ford originally came out with SYNC in 2007 and have steadily raised the bar since then. From 100 voice commands to 100,000, they’ve increased the system’s vocabulary by 100x, which makes for a more conversational experience between car and driver.
“Ford is committed to making voice recognition the primary user interface inside of the car because it allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” said Jim Buczkowski, director of Ford electronics and electrical systems engineering. “The improvements we’ve made will make it easier for drivers to use and interact with it, even those customers that have never used voice recognition before.”
More first-level commands means the user spends less time learning the system and navigating menus and more time getting things done. This also lowers the bar for the average person to jump right in and use the system. A few examples of the more direct first-level commands:
- “Call John Smith” dials the phone number associated with John in a connected phone’s phonebook directly – the user isn’t required to say “Phone” first.
- Direct commands related to destinations, like “Find a shoe store” or “Find a hotel,” place users in the navigation system menu where they will be walked through the POI search process.
- The command, “Add a phone,” will enter the phone pairing menu and walk users through the connection process – users don’t have to enter a phone submenu to initiate the pairing process.
As we have become more aware of the dangers of multi-tasking while driving, voice command is gaining popularity. One of the obstacles is the limitations of the system. We want to be able to simply say what we want and have the car do it, not learn to speak differently so that the system will understand. SYNC seems well on the way to becoming a system worthy of Knight Rider.
via Engadget