voice control

Assembly Line

iRobot CEO: Why Voice is the Future​ of Robot Control

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: Evan Ackerman

🔖 Topics: voice control

🏢 Organizations: iRobot


The reason why this kind of voice control is important is because Roombas are getting very, very sophisticated. The latest models know more about our homes than ever before, with maps and object recognition and all kinds of complex and intelligent behaviors and scheduling options. iRobot has an app that does its best to simplify the process of getting your Roomba to do exactly what you want it to do, but you still have to be comfortable poking around in the app on a regular basis. This poses a bit of a problem for iRobot, which is now having to square all these really cool new capabilities with their original concept for the robot that I still remember as being best encapsulated by having just one single button that you could push, labeled “Clean” in nice big letters.

Read more at IEEE Spectrum

Appliance Maker Implements Speech Recognition Software on the Assembly Line

📅 Date:

🔖 Topics: natural language processing, voice control

🏢 Organizations: BSH Hausgerate, Fluent AI


For BSH, Fluent.ai created a voice-recognition system that lets heavy machine operators at each workstation speak a Wakeword followed by a command into a headset. The word and command trigger the appropriate movement of an appliance on the assembly line. Previously, an operator pressed a button at his workstation to move an appliance along the line to the next station. This movement took up to four seconds between work areas.

Because the AI-based technology is hands-free, Hauer says that workers experience less fatigue and are much more productive. He points out that early results show worker efficiency has increased an average of 75 to 100 percent. “Implementing [this] technology has cut the [appliance transference] time from four seconds to one and a half,” says Markus Maier, project lead at Traunreut. “In the long run, the production time savings will be invaluable. We started [using the voice-recognition system] on one factory assembly line, then [increased it to] three, and [are now] considering rolling out the technology worldwide.”

Read more at Assembly Magazine

Knowledge base construction to improve voice-enabled AI in industrial settings

📅 Date:

✍️ Author: Daisuke Yagi

🔖 Topics: natural language processing, voice control

🏢 Organizations: Hitachi


In this research, we focus on building a framework for constructing a KB of equipment components and their problems entities with “component problem” relationship. There is a tremendous volume of unstructured textual content that contains such information in unstructured free text format or semi-structured tables format. Creating a structured representation of such entities has many benefits. For example, one of Hitachi’s outstanding technologies in this space is an AI-powered solution for monitoring, controlling, and optimizing fleet maintenance operations. At its core, this solution utilizes modern user interfaces like voice to interact with its users to give the right recommendation to the driver and the technician based on verbal complaints and vehicle sensor data. A KB of vehicle-related components and their associated problems would enable better understanding of what the user is complaining about.

Read more at Hitachi Industrial AI Blog