Touchless.ai Introduces Intuitive Speech-Enabled Technology to Prevent COVID-19 Infection From Touchscreens

By AIT News Desk On Sep 24, 2020

Roy Baharav, co-creator of Touchless.ai: “Our system will help bring customers back to restaurants, points of sale, airports, medical centers, theme parks and other public spaces. We solved the problems of voice experience in commercial environments with an AI-driven interface that really works”

Israel’s Touchless.ai has started to deploy a voice solution that turns any interactive kiosk into a voice-activated touch-free interface. The solution was specifically designed to overcome the problems of commercial environments: accuracy in noisy conditions, complexity for users, and significant cost and time needed to adapt for each business.

The solution combines cutting edge voice technology with a simple human-machine interface approach to deliver the first working voice commerce experience. Touchless.ai identifies options on the screen and attaches a voice command to each one of them. Users make their selection without touching the screen, replacing touch taps with voice commands.

Users are presented with numbered options on the screen, say the number of the option and use additional specific voice commands to conduct tasks such as ordering specific dishes at a restaurant. Touchless.ai’s solution eliminates interference from noises, thus enabling kiosks to reliably respond to voice commands. As a result, the solution is extremely easy to use, reliable, and works out-of-the-box with no setup cost.

Touchless.ai has already started trials in the U.S. and Europe with some prominent chains. The proprietary technology enables consumers to receive service at sites such as restaurants, points of sale, airports, medical centers, theme parks and other public spaces by talking to the digital kiosks without the need to touch screens.

The software solution has already been adapted for use in English, Japanese and Hebrew, but can be modified to work in any language. The solution supports all web-based apps used at kiosks and Touchless.ai is planning to adapt the software to work with iOS and Android. The Israeli startup is cooperating with some of the biggest names in technology including Intel and leading kiosk supplier Pyramid.

The public concern over interaction with touchscreens outside the home has been accentuated from the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to research by Capgemini, 77% of customers anticipate an increase in their reliance on touchless technologies. Customers intend to bypass the need to interact with humans or potentially contaminated surfaces, and they expect this behavior to persist even after Covid-19 is behind us.

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Touchless.ai’s interface needs no wake word, and works from the moment users start talking, for a seamless and natural user experience. It operates without identifying the user’s voice or face, or storing any personal data, eliminating all privacy concerns. It leverages the digital kiosk’s existing interface, so users instantly understand how to navigate using their voice.

The software works immediately with any kiosk, without any need for complex hardware or additional setup. It can be installed easily with the company’s snippet or Chrome extension, for developer-free, zero-code implementation. ‍

The initial product being marketed enables a touch-free speech-enabled solution, but Touchless.ai is already working on more sophisticated options that would offer voice assistance, such as enabling the system to understand users’ questions and respond accordingly.

Touchless.ai was created in 2020 by Hi Auto, which invented the world’s first audio-visual commercial solution for speaker separation and speech enhancement in vehicles. Hi Auto’s system is aimed at solving the reliability problem of voice-based vehicle control in noisy environments. Hi Auto, the creator of Touchless.ai, was founded by the CEO Roy Baharav, the CTO Eyal Shapira and the acting chairman Zohar Zisapel. Baharav returned recently to Israel after living 12 years in the West Coast of the U.S., where he served in various product management positions at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, and as the CEO of SeamBI that he founded in 2006.

Roy Baharav, co-creator of Touchless.ai, stated: “Touchless.ai enables businesses to instantly upgrade their digital kiosks to a natural, seamless voice experience that their customers will love. Now more than ever, we see it as our mission to give today’s businesses the touchless technology needed to keep the kiosk experience safe and empower businesses to continue thriving.’’

“We solved the problems of voice experience in commercial environments with a system that really works, and that’s the big news,” continued Baharav. “Until now, voice interfaces in commercial environments did not work for three reasons: the tasks were too complex for the existing technologies; the voice recognition technologies were not accurate enough in a noisy environment with complex interactions; and the setup for existing solutions could run into tens of thousands of dollars to develop a new voice application and take several months.”

“We found a solution for all these problems and came up with the first speech enabled system for interactive kiosks that can work accurately in multi-speaker commercial settings. Another key problem is that people speak in a non-structured way. Therefore, voice interfaces fail, and people don’t like using them in a commercial environment where you need to carry out a complex order. This is why menus work. Menu users understand what is offered and can say exactly what they want. It is easy, and this is why we use menus at Tocuhless.ai.”