Voice-Activated Voicebox GPS Likes How You Talk
Just tell it what you want and this new GPS from Pioneer may very well be able to do it. The company yesterday announced the AVIC-F500BT hybrid navigation system – although you can already forget those numbers. Just call it the "AVIC Link." That's what company vice president Larry Rougas did at Pioneer's press conference Sunday.
The AVIC Link is an in-dash and portable navigation device that has a host of very cool features. Tops on our list is voice command and control that uses the VoiceBox Conversational Voice Search Platform.
"This creates a new way for your gadgets to link to each other while in your car," Rougas said. "With natural voice commands you control your iPod, you control your Bluetooth phone, and of course you control your navigation."
Voicebox is supposed to be quite forgiving of the normal starts and stutters that occur when people speak. Pioneer claims you can speak into Voicebox a natural way to choose directions, initiate a call over a connected capable phone, or control what music to play off your MP3 player using very normal spoken sentences, such as: "Play, um, um let's see the album Joshua Tree."
Note that this is different from text-to-speech, which this unit also has. Text-to-speech means that when the GPS device is giving you directions it actually says the name of the street you're supposed to turn on to.
The unit comes installed with maps of North America and Hawaii from TeleAtlas and more than 12 million points of interest (such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels, etc.). It's also compatible with MSN Direct's pay service, which provides traffic information, movie times, and weather, among things. You get the first three months free when you purchase the device.
The AVIC Link ships this Spring. We can't wait to get our hands on one for a test drive. We like technology that actually speaks our language.
From Pioneer.
Related links:
- Goodyear to Guide Drivers by GPS (Blimp Not Included)
- Garmin Launching Loads of New GPS Devices at CES
- Mercedes Ties Google and Yahoo! Maps to In-Car Navigation
