Toys

Speech recognition has a long history in the toy industry. Radio Rex was the first commercial toy to respond to voice commands. Produced in 1922 by the Elmwood Button Co., Radio Rex predates computers by more than 20 years.

…Fast forward about 85 years and you’ll find Nobby, the world’s first commercially available Voice Trigger implementation. Nobby is one of the toys that have found their voice thanks to Rubidium’s technology. The ability to speak to your toys and have them continuously listen to you and respond with cheeky answers is a dream whose time has come. Leading toy manufactures like Mattel, Hasbro, Tiger and Tomy have all come to Rubidium for their Voice User Interface (VUI) needs.

Nobby is a cute little voice recognition toy who serves as an alarm clock and also as someone with whom you can chitchat in the mornings. Nobby and his Toyland compatriots listen and respond to voice commands using Rubidium’s chip-level implementations. Our low cost, small footprint technology provides the ability to fit a lot of functionality in a small amount of space, helps keep production costs down and attracts toy designers and manufactures to Rubidium.