Top 10 Consumer Electronic Products with Speech Recognition

  1. Radio Rex. There’s always something special about the first one – this was from almost 100 years ago! Rex was a toy dog that lived in a doghouse, and the waveform from calling his name would vibrate a spring at a certain frequency that would make Rex exit the doghouse. Basically, a mechanical speech recognition device!
  2. Radar the Robot. Sure, this list will be highly biased with products that used Sensory technology. Fisher Price released Radar the Robot back in 1995! Radar would talk to kids, sing songs with them, do math games, word games, and much, much more. I remember one of my kids walking into my room and speaking in a robotic voice to imitate Radar, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Would you like to play word games? Please say yes or no.”
  3. Password Journal. Not only is this the bestselling girls’ electronic product of all time, but it uses voice biometrics as a key feature (to lock a diary). I once heard that half of all 11-year-old girls in the US have a diary and their top concern is that someone unintended will open it and read it. This product was so successful that Girltech, the company Sensory worked with, was acquired by Radica, who was then acquired by Mattel. Most new toy introductions have a 1-2 year life. This product, and its many revisions, has been on the market for over 15 years!
  4. Voice Signal and VOS light switches. Voice Signal Technologies was a company started around 1995 to build voice controlled light switches. They got so excited about speech technology that they successfully transitioned into a leader in embedded speech (they went from Sensory’s customer to competitor!), and were eventually sold to Nuance for just under $300M! Sensory’s customer VOS also made light switches. VOS even introduced a Star-Trek branded light switch and licensed Majel Roddenberry’s voice. Computer Lights On!
  5. Uniden Voice Dial. I’ll never forget the thrill of landing in Las Vegas for CES, and going down the escalator into the baggage claim area and seeing a HUGE sign saying “Uniden Introduces VoiceDial.” The phones worked great. They even ran a TV commercial featuring the famous sumo wrestler Konishiki saying “Pizza-man.”
  6. Moshi Clock. What a great clock! You could set the alarm or time just by speaking to it. The clock would even tell you the weather. And this was pre-SIRI!!
  7. BlueAnt V1. BlueAnt moved two steps ahead of its competitors with the V1. It had a completely voice-driven user interface that replaced the buttons and flashing lights on a Bluetooth headset. This was probably the first consumer electronic device that enabled a full and complex VUI-based experienced. And the reviews were some of best reviews I have ever seen.
  8. Apple SIRI/iPhone 4s. SIRI was an amazing breakthrough for voice recognition – not so much in the capabilities it presented, but in the marketing and brand support behind it. When Apple said the time was right for speech recognition, the world listened and consumer electronic OEMs suddenly changed!
  9. Google Glass. OK, it’s not shipping yet, but they have taken a VERY novel approach to speech by using what they refer to in the press as “hotword” models. We in the industry call this Keyword spotting. I handed my Glass to my wife and she put it on and said “You mean I just say OK Glass? Oh now I see all these other things so I can say Get Directions to Chef Chus restaurant? Woah! It’s showing me directions to Chef Chus!” The device throws out all the wrong words and captures the key words it wants to hear then seamlessly switches to a cloud-based recognizer.

  10. Motorola MotoX. 15M plus views for a TV commercial featuring voice control!!! And the users LOVE it! Touchless Control is one of the best reviewed apps in the GooglePlay store!