Houndify Voice AI Platform Powers Conversational Experiences Across Auto and Wearables

The Houndify Platform Enables Partners to Build Customized, Best-in-Class Conversational Interfaces That Allow Consumers to Speak Naturally to Connected Devices

SoundHound Inc, the leading innovator in voice-enabled AI and conversational intelligence technologies, today announced several integrations of its Houndify voice AI platform into products across multiple Internet of Things (IoT) categories: automotive, connected speakers, robotics, appliances, augmented reality experiences, smart home, and wearables. Some of the companies showcasing Houndify integrations include Hyundai, HUMAX, BUNN, Mayfield Robotics, AvatarMind Robots, Modiface, PhotoSpring and Onkyo. Demos of their products will be shown at CES 2018 in Las Vegas this week.

Automotive:

Hyundai Intelligent Personal Agent — Intelligent Personal Agent, Hyundai’s new voice-enabled virtual assistant system powered by Houndify, introduces a futuristic driving experience where the system’s proactive assistant can predict drivers’ needs. Drivers can seamlessly control features of the car, including air conditioning, sunroof, and door locks, with voice commands. The Houndify platform makes it possible to combine an array of driver conveniences, including making phone calls, sending hands-free text messages, searching for destinations, refining previous searches, playing music, checking weather, and managing schedules. The experience also supports “Car-to-Home” service, enabling drivers to interact with their smart home devices from the car.

Connected Speaker:

HUMAX Speaker — HUMAX, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of digital set-top boxes, smart home and gateway solutions, connected devices and network solutions, exporting its products to more than 90 countries across the globe, has partnered with SoundHound Inc. to provide a best-in-class personal voice assistant integrated into a new AI speaker with display functionality. Leveraging SoundHound Inc.’s powerful Houndify platform, users can make compound and complex queries, and ask follow-up questions without needing to provide context. Users of the new HUMAX speaker will also benefit from Houndify’s ongoing expansion of functionality and domain knowledge without ever needing to activate new “skills.”

Robotics:

Kuri Robot by Mayfield Robotics — Houndify helps Kuri, a cute and adorable home robot, both hear and understand a variety of commands like: “Hey Kuri, tell me a joke,” “go home,” “play my favorite song,” and more.

AvatarMind’s iPal Robot — The iPal robot integrates Houndify’s voice control for directing movement of the robot and general voice assistant features, including the ability to follow up, refine a query, and more. It can also be customized for particular commercial or educational use cases.

Appliances:

BUNN Sure Immersion Coffee Machine — BUNN, the global leader in industrial beverage dispensing equipment, supplier to the world’s leading beverage brands, and a household name for coffee machines everywhere, has developed the Sure Immersion Machine featuring “bean-to-cup” brewing that instantly grinds your selection. With Houndify integrated, users can operate and interact with the coffee machine using the wake phrase “OK, Barista…” While the cup of coffee brews, users can ask for the weather, sports updates, nutritional information and much more, and the experience can be customized uniquely for brands.

Augmented Reality:

Modiface Makeup Mirror — Utilizing the world’s most accurate beauty AR engine from Modiface, mobile devices such as the iPad can become magic mirrors as customers test makeup virtually. Through an integration with Houndify, the Modiface Makeup Application becomes voice-enabled. For example, users can simply say, “Show me green eyeshadow,” or “add red lipstick and pink blush,” and the application shows them what they would look like with those makeup effects. Modiface technology is used by top beauty brands around the world, including L’Oreal, Sephora, Estée Lauder and MAC.

Smart Home:

PhotoSpring Digital Photo Frame — PhotoSpring is redefining the digital photo and video experience by helping people stay connected to the people they love. The easy-to-use, WiFi-connected, touchscreen digital frame automatically uploads and shares photos and videos from your iPhone, Android and other web-connected devices. Now, with the Hound voice assistant, users can say “OK Hound, show me my albums,” and ask about the weather, local restaurants, set timers and more.

Wearables:

Onkyo AI Smart Wearable — Onkyo exhibits a wearable smart concierge device that is worn around your neck and features a voice assistant. Users can simply speak, hands-free, to activate an assistant, search, navigate, play music and send text messages, and more.

“Conversational voice interfaces represent the next shift in how we interact with the devices around us and the user behavior of speaking to things will quickly become an integral part of our daily lives,” said Keyvan Mohajer, cofounder and CEO of SoundHound Inc. “Houndify’s platform-agnostic approach allows companies across all verticals to quickly and easily embed a robust conversational voice interface into their products — while still maintaining their brand’s identity — and we’re thrilled to add these new partnerships to our portfolio.”

Houndify is the first independent AI platform that enables developers and business owners to deploy a conversational interface anywhere and retain control of their brand and users, while differentiating and innovating. Houndify provides all the technology ingredients necessary for voice and AI integration, including the world’s fastest speech recognition, the most sophisticated natural language understanding, easy to use developer tools, knowledge graphs, and a large and rapidly growing number of domains. Domains are programs that provide a natural and fully conversational interface on specific topics, without requiring the users to memorize and use the specific phrasing of hard coded commands or skills.

Houndify technologies represent more than a decade of R&D and innovation by SoundHound Inc., resulting in significant and unique advantages. Key advantages include SoundHound Inc.’s patented Speech-to-Meaning™ and Deep Meaning Understanding™ technologies, which deliver unprecedented speed and accuracy in voice recognition and responses, and understands context, such as the user’s location or previous queries, to support natural interactions.

More than 60,000 partners have registered on the Houndify platform since its launch in December 2015, and more than 1,000 distinct products are being Houndified. Strategic partners include the Samsung ARTIK Smart IoT platform, and NVIDIA, which brings Houndify’s large vocabulary speech recognition and natural language understanding to cars even without cloud connection by utilizing NVIDIA GPUs. Other Houndify partners include integrations with Sharp’s RoBoHoN® platform; Rand McNally, which uses the company’s voice technology in its OverDryve™ connected car device; and 11 car makers around the world.

SoundHound Inc. turns sound into understanding and actionable meaning. We believe in enabling humans to interact with the things around them in the same way we interact with each other: by speaking naturally to mobile phones, cars, TVs, music speakers, and every other part of the emerging ‘connected’ world.