Multimodal services from TravellingWave and Carnie Mellon University

Multi modal input technology TravellingWave has teamed with the Quality of Life Technology Centrewhich is lead by Carnegie Mellon University to create VoicePredict.

VoicePredict?
This is special technology for the elderly and disabled.

How?
Basically this service combines the TravellingWave speech and text technology so users can switch between keyboard input and speech output. Because you can speak and or type it means that you are guaranteed more accurate results.

From the press release
“We view VoicePredict as a pervasive voice interface, which naturally leads to an important assistive technology,” says Dr. Ashwin Rao, TravellingWave’s CEO. “The opportunity to collaborate with outstanding and highly distinguished professors and researchers will enable us to combine VoicePredict with QoLT’s products and, subsequently, benefit the elderly and disabled”.

“This collaborative field project is an opportunity to inject our participatory design process into development of a commercial product aimed at people with disabilities,” says Dr. Daniel P. Siewiorek, Director of the CMU Human-Computer Interaction institute, and Buhl University Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering, who heads up QoLT’s research in Human-System Interaction. “This project plans to incorporate TravellingWave’s predictive speech-to-text technology into a suite of human-system interaction technologies for users who have concomitant dexterity and/or cognitive impairments. Such interactions are central to a number of QoLT systems our center is currently developing, including wheelchair usage coaches and robotic mobility/manipulation assistants, as well as future envisioned systems, such as household management and personal safety coaches.”

What we think?
Well done to TravellingWave. I tested and used this service two years ago and it was OK but I can imagine that in two years it has improved. This is a great service and any benefit to the elderly and disabled is worthwhile.