Sep. 9, 2009 (Business Wire) -- Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), today announced that its Music Search and One-Shot Destination Entry speech technology are now featured as part of the BMW 2010 model series. Nuance’s innovative speech technology has been integrated as part of Professional, BMW’s new navigation system. The system is available in various languages, and will be introduced throughout the U.S. and Europe beginning this month.
Speech technology has been available for many years in BMW’s infotainment systems to support voice dialing and destination entry in the conventional multi-step approach. However, through these technology advancements made possible by Nuance, the new generation of BMW systems now enables a more conversational dialogue between drivers and BMW navigation and entertainment systems. Drivers can search for music by voice and enter an entire destination address in one, simple spoken command, ultimately reducing the distraction posed by manual input and limiting visual confirmation.
Nuance’s speech technology is combined with BMW’s iDrive system, its renowned console controller that enables drivers to control the entire head unit, including entertainment, communication and navigation systems. Both interfaces can be used simultaneously and allow a multimodal use of the speech input that allows drivers to switch easily between the manual controller input and speech recognition. This allows the driver to use navigation and entertainment system quickly and efficiently while minimizing distractions. The system was developed by Harman Becker Automotive, a leading automotive supplier and Nuance partner.
“Speech technology is increasingly becoming a key automotive interface as it allows drivers to remain focused on the road, yet still take advantage of today’s most popular in-car features like MP3 connectivity and navigation,” said Arnd Weil, general manager, Nuance Automotive. “By integrating our Music Search and One-Shot Destination Entry as part of in-car infotainment systems, car manufacturers have demonstrated their commitment to providing a safer and more user friendly driving experience.”
Nuance’s One-Shot Destination Entry featured as part of the new Professional BMW navigation system enables drivers to simply speak an entire address in one, simple command versus a series of multi-step dialogs and response commands for city, street and street number. Drivers can now simply say “1 Wayside Road, Burlington, Massachusetts,” and the route will be calculated automatically.
With Nuance’s next-generation Music Search capabilities for automotive, BMW drivers can quickly and easily access their favorite, stored songs from behind the wheel by selecting the audio source, genre, artist, album or song with a simple, spoken command. Nuance Music Search also recognizes several languages in parallel.
