Raanana, Israel and Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Rubidium Ltd., a global supplier of embedded speech processing technologies, and NXP Software, the leading global independent software vendor (ISV) for mobile voice and multimedia, announced today that they will be demonstrating the powerful effect NXP Software’s audio enhancement technology has on speech recognition accuracy and noise-robustness.
NXP Software and Rubidium have combined Rubidium’s state-of-the-art Voice-Trigger Speech Recognition (ASR) technology with NXP Software’s Noise Suppression (NS) and Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) software to create an always-listening speech command capability that works continuously even in the noisiest environments. NXP Software’s LifeVibes technology is designed for mobile devices, ensuring clear and natural voice calling quality for every use case. It allows device manufacturers to deliver voice quality that will exceed any mobile operator’s requirements.
“Adding Noise Reduction to the front-end of a VUI is not an easy task,” states Founder and CEO of Rubidium, Shlomo Peller, “and while perceived audio quality may sound better, the combination with an ASR engine may not perform well at all. Our engineers were therefore pleased to prove that the integrated technology could exceed expectations, especially in live and noisy environments. More than just a game, however, this creative and fun demo highlights the benefits of combining best-in-class technologies into one highly efficient voice user interface solution.”
NXP Software has designed an inspired game running as an Android app, wherein a city building is on fire and the players need to use their voice to command and control the firehouse to put the fire out. The loud sound and music of the game echoes from the device speakers into its microphone, which together with the ambient noise severely interferes with the user’s spontaneous voice commands, to a level they can hardly be heard. LifeVibes software keeps the commands clear and unaffected by external sounds. Together with Rubidium’s Voice-Trigger Speech Recognition solution, NXP Software’s audio enhancement enables new use cases and a natural hands-free human-device interaction.
“We are very excited to work with Rubidium to demonstrate the use of voice commands in very noisy situations,” states Edwin Zuidema, Marketing Director for NXP Software, “NXP Software’s LifeVibes pre-processing combined with Rubidium’s low-power voice trigger application offers a unique solution for enabling a voice interface in many challenging use cases, such as in the mobile, wearable and smartphone arena.”
When stopping at the NXP Software booth 7C31 (Hall 7) at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, visitors will be able to experience the future role of speech interface in a smarter and friendlier world by playing the game with the NS/AEC on or off to see the difference.
The combined NXP Software – Rubidium solution, featuring a highly noise- and echo-robust solution is available to smartphone and mobile device makers on a variety of platforms, from Android-based devices to standalone chips.
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About Rubidium Ltd.
Rubidium covers the entire scope of embedded Voice User Interface: speech recognition with beam forming, always-listening Voice Trigger wake-up, text-to-speech, speech compression, biometric speaker verification, and more. Rubidium’s industry leading speech processing solutions are optimized for low-resource, low-power embedded applications in mobile, wireless, wearable, automotive and home appliances. Rubidium’s multi-lingual solutions can work either standalone or combined with a cloud-based speech engine and provide customers with a totally hands-free, safe and productive user experience.Barge-in support and microphone array beam forming as well as a voice trigger demo application for Android® are just a few of the innovations from Rubidium for 2014.With over 50 million products in the market, Rubidium’s low cost, small footprint technology is available for a large selection of processors, chips and software environments. Visit @RubidiumLtd on Twitter and YouTube and also at www.rubidium.com .
About NXP Software
NXP Software is the leading global independent software vendor (ISV) for mobile voice and multimedia. It specializes in innovative solutions and use-cases that help device makers deliver extraordinary media experiences. Through its expertise, consumer insights and partnerships across the mobile eco-system, NXP Software enables the delivery of Premium experiences everywhere. Its LifeVibes® software brings added enjoyment, creativity and differentiation to connected devices, unlocking the full potential of software and hardware platforms. Visit us at www.nxpsoftware.com.NXP Software B.V. is a separate legal entity of NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI).