Synaptics has become the latest member of Amazon’s Voice Interoperability Initiative, and will now be working with the tech giant to improve the utility of IoT products with more than one voice-based service. To that end, Synaptics will offer particular expertise on the subject of multiple wake words, which allow users to activate and navigate multiple voice recognition services at the same time without any drop-off in performance. For example, consumers would be able to use their voice to turn on their TV and bring up Alexa on a set-top box.
Synaptics’s System-on-Chip solutions are designed for media products like streaming platforms and smart displays in addition to smart speakers and other smart audio products. The company’s portfolio includes far-field voice recognition software, as well as a differentiated Neural Network Processing Unit (NPU) that enables local language processing. The latter will reduce latency and allow consumers to interact with conversational AI assistants even when their device is not connected to the cloud.
According to Synaptics, Altice and Swisscom have already announced set-top boxes with multiple wake word capabilities. The voice recognition specialist is hoping that the Amazon partnership will allow it to build on its strong performance in its most recent quarterly reports, which helped reverse the company’s downward trend in the first half of 2019.
The news comes shortly after Synaptics added Susan Hardman to its Board of Directors.
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