recognition

Nuance, the speech recognition company currently powering Apple’s Siri in the iPhone 4S, announced (via TechCrunch) it would be dropping a new voice-controlled TV platform known as “Dragon TV.” Apple is —of course— expected to include Siri-like voice capabilities in the rumored Apple branded HDTV, but Dragon TV has beat them to it with a platform that will enable users to find “content by speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names.”

Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today unveiled Dragon TV, a unique voice and natural language understanding platform for TV, device and set-top box OEMs and service operators. Dragon TV makes finding and accessing shows, movies and content in today’s digital living room easy and fun for consumers.

Nuance provided a few examples of what type of voice-control commands might work on the platform, such as “Go to PBS” or “Find comedies with Vince Vaughn,” but a user’s commands could include “virtually anything.” The company also announced the platform will include social and messaging features, such as email, Twitter, messaging, Skype, and Facebook. Those features will also be voice-controlled allowing a user to use voice-commands, such as “Send message to Julie: ‘Old School is on TBS again this weekend – super excited’”.

According to the press release, the Dragon TV platform is already available to television and device OEMs with support for “all major TV, set-top box, remote control and application platforms.” As for specific platforms, the press release mentions Linux, Android, and iOS. There is —of course— a possibility that the technology used in the Dragon TV platform will land in a version of Siri for an Apple TV device.

Senior Vice President and General Manager at Nuance Mobile Mike Thompson said this regarding the announcement:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Much like the somewhat controversial face unlock feature built-in to Google’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone, a new patent application reveals Apple too is working on similar, but more advanced user detection solutions. As PatentlyApple pointed out, Apple noted these recognition systems could land in a future iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or MacBook.

The basics of the patent entitled “Low Threshold Face Recognition,” is to allow a user to unlock a device—such an iPhone or iPad—using facial recognition. Apple’s solution could allow the device’s camera to recognize the user even when the device is in sleep mode. In other words, the device’s camera would remain active when sleeping, detect the user, and unlock the device without having to press the sleep/wake button. This could, in theory, allow a user to bypass the current Slide to Unlock feature.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the system would be the ability for the device’s settings to be customized depending on the user. For example, when detecting a specific user, iOS could set personalized wallpapers, notification settings, and custom configurations for apps. This would provide multiple user logins, allowing iOS users to easily share a device among family or coworkers.

Apple’s system would differ from other face recognition systems by ignoring face biometrics. As PatentlyApple explained, “The face recognition techniques are based on a simple, weighted difference map, rather than traditional (and computationally expensive) correlation matching.” Apple’s system could detect “high information portions” of a face such as the eyes, mouth, or the tip of a nose. In addition, an “orange-distance filter” could be applied to determine variations in skin tone and detect the “likely presence” of a user. This could detect the distance between the device and the user’s face, as well as the user’s “level of attentiveness.”

In 2010, before the iPad launch, The Wall Street Journal reported Apple was experimenting with the ability to recognize individual users with the device’s camera. Today’s patent was originally filed in 2009.

Expand
Expanding
Close