8hertz and Kirusa announce multimodal solutions for the Automobile Industry

Volkswagen’s Multimodal Car Manual Application wins Innovation Award, Highlights shift in Human-Machine Interface Strategies

Berlin, Germany, and Edison, New Jersey – October 28, 2004: 8hertz, Germany's leading voice application developer, and Kirusa, the world’s leading provider of multimodal solutions, announced the availability of the world's first multimodal applications for the automobile industry. The multimodal applications have been developed by 8hertz, and use Kirusa’s multimodal core technology, including the Kirusa Multimodal Platform and Kirusa’s Multimodal Clients for smart phones. The companies further announced that the Multimodal Owner’s Manual application developed for Volkswagen has been awarded a top prize at the AutoMechanica trade fair.

The server-based, speech-driven multimodal services provide for simultaneous spoken and visual interfaces to access information of interest to car drivers. The first applications are currently being tested by major auto manufacturers, including Volkswagen.

The new Volkswagen Multimodal Owner’s Manual is the first of its kind and received industry-wide accolades at the worlds largest automobile trade fair, AutoMechanika (13 - 19 September, 2004), in Frankfurt, winning one of the four coveted Innovation Prizes at the fair. The application was developed for Volkswagen by the voice application company, 8hertz Technologies GmbH (8hertz).

Jackson Bond, CEO of 8hertz, added: “Without Kirusa’s multimodal technology, and the responsive Kirusa support team, the development of such a robust application would not have been possible in such a short time.”

The service allows drivers to keep their eyes focused on the road and hands on the steering wheel while asking even complex questions such as "How does the Automatic Distance Control work?" or "What does this air-bag light mean?" The requested information is then delivered both acoustically and visually through the driver's own mobile device, e.g. smart phone or mobile digital assistant (MDA), directly from the existing Volkswagen Owner’s Manual data located on a content server. Pictures from the manual are delivered simultaneously as a visual aid to accompany the description read aloud to the driver. In this way an accompanying passenger, or the driver when stopped, can compare the picture to the vehicle, to more quickly locate necessary functional elements..

A key feature of the multimodal applications is that the spoken input does not have to use the traditional mobile telephone GSM voice channel, but can use the data channel via GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, FLASH-OFDM®, or WLAN, now available on many mobile phones and devices. This allows the combination of voice and visual information exchange. Customers can thus use their existing mobile devices instead of retrofitting their car with new technology.

Current spoken human machine interface systems in cars include very limited on-board speech recognition for only a few hundred key words. By contrast, the more powerful server-based speech recognition over the mobile Internet can process several tens of thousands of words, including full sentences and synonyms. The technology also allows a “barge-in” feature so the user can randomly interrupt the system, thus providing more flexible navigation between any items of interest within a given set of services.

The server-based multimodal technology also brings several cost advantages. The car maker is much faster to market with new services in real-time, directly through existing customer devices, without costly, time-consuming changes to the technology in the car that can take several years. Manufacturers can also provide immediate updates to their customers, instead of sending out new software updates to individual automobiles.

“A multimodal interface provides immediate value to car drivers trying to access information while in or near a car.”, noted Ewald Anderl, CTO and Vice President of Kirusa. “When combined with the legal regulations and safety concerns, the resultant market opportunity for multimodal services in a car is enormous. We congratulate 8hertz for its innovative application development and Volkswagen on being awarded the Innovation Prize for the Multimodal Car Manual application.”

About 8hertz

8hertz Technologies GmbH is one of Europe's leading voice business enablers, offering award-winning innovative products and applications for Blue-Chip companies, using speech-recognition to make business processes more efficient. 8hertz has developed products and solutions for telecom providers, logistics industry, call-centers, government, public transport, and automobile manufacturers. 8hertz customers include among others, Volkswagen, BMW, ABX Logistics, Ericsson, the State of Berlin, Hamburg Public Transport Company.

For more information, please contact 8hertz at www.8hertz.com.

About Kirusa

Kirusa is one of the leading global developers of Mobile Social Media and Value Added Services enabling mobile subscribers to reach out to their family and friends. Kirusa’s solutions include the hugely successful Kirusa Voice SMS service, the world’s most advanced Voice SMS solution, used by over 30 carriers around the world. Kirusa has pioneered a suite of social media applications that facilitate mobile subscribers to interact through voice, including the Call-n-Tweet application which helps users update their Twitter status using voice. Kirusa provides an open platform with APIs to enable third parties to offer mobile applications services to mobile subscribers. Used by mobile subscribers millions of times daily, Kirusa solutions are built on its patented and patent pending technology and its highly reliable and scalable open multimodal platform. Kirusa has been recognized as one of top 100 technology companies by Silicon India, and one of top 25 emerging technology companies by Smart Techie magazine. Headquartered in New Jersey and led by an experienced team of wireless telecom executives and technologists, Kirusa has offices in three continents. ‘Kirusa Voice SMS,’ is a trademark of Kirusa, Inc.

For more information visit: www.kirusa.com.

Media Contacts

Kirusa
Navneet Anand
GreyMatters Communications
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