Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM JANUARY 2017 50 A s voice recognition gets better and better, the future of the smart home looks brighter. Voice recognition—when we think of the home of the future, the ultimate Jetson-esque abode, we think of controlling it with our voices. And while it's been around for a while in various iterations, it has gotten a bit of a bad rap. That's because by and large, users find voice recognition technology in devices to be frustratingly slow and riddled with errors. We've all seen some of the hilarious mistakes made when devices try to translate voice to text, for example. The fact remains, however, that voice recognition is more convenient than typing or hitting buttons on a remote control. A new study from Stanford University found that speech recognition can be used to compose text messages faster and more accurately than we mere mortals can type on mobile phone screens. "Speech recognition is something that's been promised to us for decades, but it has never worked very well," says James Landay, a professor of computer science at Stanford and co-author of the study. "But we were noticing that in the past two to three years, speech recognition was actually improving a lot, benefiting from big data and deep learning to train its neural networks to produce faster, more accurate results. So we decided to formally test it against humans." The results were clear no matter the language. For English, speech recognition was three times faster than typing, and the error rate was 20.4 percent lower. In Mandarin Chinese, speech was 2.8 times faster, with an error rate 63.4 percent lower than typing. As the consumer electronics industry continues to refine its various voice-recognition technologies, we're also seeing big improvements in usability along with some interesting retail strategies. For one, Amazon is putting its Alexa voice assistant technology in tons of devices, such as its Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers, Amazon Fire TV, and Amazon Tap, in an effort to take over the smart home with inexpensive electronics. Apple, of course, is big on voice interaction with Siri, and has even integrated Siri in to new Apple TVs so that you can search a movie without having to annoyingly type on a keyboard plastered on your TV screen. Apple also has a framework for smart devices called HomeKit, that can be controlled with Siri, as well. You can ask Siri to turn an appliance on or off, or set one of your home scenes, for example. While these types of devices and technology are very mainstream, home automation companies have been following suit for some time, with companies like Control4 integrating these technologies into its own products. Control4 recently announced integration with Amazon Alexa, Amazon Tap and Amazon Fire TV. The new Control4 Smart Home Skill provides homeowners with the convenience of whole-home automation through simple and intuitive voice commands that can activate smart home scenes and control individual devices. "On average, our customers have over 40 connected devices in their homes that are orchestrated by Control4 and now, voice interaction with Amazon Alexa offers another convenient way to control all of them," said Martin Plaehn, Control4 CEO. "[This reinforces] our shared vision to make life in a connected home ever-more personalized, comfortable, and hassle-free." Likewise, Savant lets you speak different, simple commands to control your entertainment such as "Apple TV" or "ESPN." Say "Brighter" and your lights will dial up. If you're loving the lights and music, just say "CAPTURE" to save a Savant Scene you can recall any time. If you have Sonos, simply say "PLAY MUSIC" to listen to whatever's in your queue. All of this is great news for the custom retailer, who has a unique opportunity to show some of this technology in his or her showroom. Well-executed demos a home environment controlled by voice are very effective. It's also great news for consumers, who can expect the technology to continue to improve until it's so intuitive, those jokes about misinterpreted voice commands may just become a thing of the past. Dave Workman Consumer Electronic Trends Dave Workman is the CEO of ProSource. RO THE VOICE OF THE SMART HOME

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