Speak Up: How Voice Will Control Connected Homes

Voice commands are becoming a real factor in consumers’ lives. Siri for Apple, Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana keep getting more and more sophisticated and every day more people rely upon them to control their mobile devices.

With the expansion of the IoT, it is almost inevitable that smart homes will at some point be programmed to respond to commands for lights, HVAC system adjustments and other key M2M functions. There are already tools at hand to get this done for the early adopters out there, like Amazon Echo. Amazon’s offering is a powerful and simple solution. A wake up command gives access to a variety of controls, but it can only do what is available through the Amazon Web Services ecosystem.

SPLICE Software has created what it calls a Dialogue Suite of products that allow IoT developers to leverage an API to produce voice-controlled devices for many different applications, both inside and out of the smart home. 

Tara Kelly, CEO, SPLICE Software, said, “Voice controls really make sense in home, car and retail environments, where ambient noise is at a minimum.”

Although many IoT solutions are designed with mobile device controls for monitoring sensors or issuing commands for control services, voice can feel more natural if it’s executed well. “I think speech is better. But, it all comes from context: use the right mechanism in the right context,” Kelly said. “Voice is currently the easiest way for us to communicate.”

Developers are still working on the problem of listening, of course. Everyone who has tried to command a phone to “call mom” and accidentally called “Martin that weird troll who put his number in my phone” knows that this is true.

“We need to be on the mark to engage diction and tone to make good connections,” Kelly said. To address that problem, at SPLICE, they’re creating a phrase-based recording library, which is much more accurate than the usual word-based speech libraries.

The solution isn’t really here yet, but it’s coming, if you’re listening.

If you’re interested in learning more about voice command in the IoT, or other command interfaces, make sure you attend IoT Evolution Expo, which will be at Caesars in Las Vegas August 17 to 20. We’ll be exploring issues of control and communication all week.