VoiceBox aims to improve in-car voice controls

Voice control of in-car electronics is moving into the fast lane thanks to a system developed by Seattle-based VoiceBox Technologies Inc.

The company's technology interprets voice commands made by drivers by working with voice-recognition systems already on the market and trying to work out the meaning of what's been said. Unlike in many of the voice control systems offered by auto makers, the commands aren't restricted to a narrowly defined list of instructions.

"We have two pieces of very valuable technology that allow us to interpret the intention behind what someone said and allows us to put the utterance in context," Tom Freeman, the company's senior vice president of marketing, said during an interview at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Monday. "Our technology figures out the meaning behind the phrases, and that makes our recognition rates -- in the car, in a noisy environment, in environments where your eyes are busy and your hands are busy -- much, much higher than just using a plain speech recognizer."

Freeman demonstrated the technology by driving his car, which is equipped with an XM Satellite Radio system and the voice controller, through the Las Vegas streets.

"Find jazz and blues," he said, and the system began to list the jazz and blues channels available through the satellite signal. "Play Watercolors," he commanded, and the system switched to the Watercolors channel.

XM Satellite Radio also broadcasts information as a data stream, and the system could understand questions and then find the relevant data and respond.

"What was the score of the Seattle Seahawks game?" he asked. After a pause of a couple of seconds, the system responded with the correct score.

The company has also coupled its technology with a navigation system. The system, running on a Samsung ultra mobile PC, was able to interpret instructions from the driver and plot a route based on those instructions. VoiceBox said it's already working with navigation system makers to build the technology into those devices.

"Navigation systems are a great tool, but they are notoriously difficult to use," Freeman said. "It can take a very long time to set a destination in, and lord help you if you want to find points of interest around that destination."

VoiceBox said an in-car system for satellite radio should be available at the end of the year, and radios and navigation systems with the technology embedded will appear in 2008.