This year at CES, some of the most interesting things I saw came from companies that produce small electronics. Items that are all about convenience and fun, that won’t take the same bite out of your budget as the big guy’s 60 inch 3D television. One of my visits at CES was with Moshi. Moshi has a line of products, mostly centered around alarm clocks that are controlled via their innovative voice recognition technology.
Known as Technology that Listens or Voice Control (VC) Technology, it utilizes a blend of two separate models, which in comparison differ from any other voice recognition application. Moshi’s combination of Neural Net and Hidden Markov Modeling (HMM) Phonetic Speaker Independent (SI) Recognition Software is designed to allow anyone to be able to control their electronics using their voice alone.
The HMM recognition is a statistical model that is designed to require no training or setup. The combination of the HMM and Neural Net model is supported and trained to recognize over 1,000 different recorded voices. Moshi spent 3 years traveling to each region of the United States to record every signle different voice type. This allows all of Moshi’s products to be able to understand a large vocabulary of voice recognition commands. The technology is speaker independent making all Moshi’s products capable of understanding almost anyone right out of the box. Moshi’s technology even accommodates a wide variety of accents too.
Moshi was highlighting two new release products during my visit with them, the first one is their Voice Control Bluetooth Car Speakerphone (BTHF205). The unit requires no special installation and is completely voice operated with special commands. It also uses text to speech capabilities to provide stat and caller id information.
Some of the commands include
- What Can I Say? – Provides a list of commands for the unit
- Enter Pair Mode – Pairs the unit with your phone
- Am I Connected? – Tells you the units current connection status
- Redial – Calls the last outgoing call
- Call Back – Calls thew last incoming call
- Call Favorite 1-5 – Calls speed Dial 1-5
The unit has 7 hours of talk time and 460 hours of standby time. It uses a rechargeable battery and comes with a car charger. The unit will be released in February 2010 and will be priced at $79.99.
The second product featured during my visit was one of Moshi’s new Voice Controlled Digital Clock Radios. It uses voice recognition to set all of the functions with easy commands. It has two different alarms with 3 alarm and 3 sleep sounds and a 9 minute snooze timer. Sound is provided via a 2 channel speaker system with an AUX-IN jack for your MP3 player. The AM/FM radio has 6 station presets to give you instant access to your favorite tunes.
Some of the voice commands used to control the clock’s functions include:
- Hello Moshi – Puts clock in listen mode
- Time – Tells you the current time
- Set Time – Allows you to set the time
- Alarm – Tells you the wake up time
- Set Alarm – Allows you to set the alarm
- Turn Off Alarm – Turns Off the Alarm
- Snooze – Lets you Sleep Longer
The radio will be released later this spring.
The voice control on both these products provides a handy way to interact with them. It’s intuitive and friendly for people whether you are a gadgeteer or not. You can find more information on these and Moshi’s other product at their website http://www.moshilifestyle.com. I look forward to seeing and hearing more from Moshi in the future.
