During the holidays, my partner and I ended up driving a rental car all over New Jersey and New York to visit our families. We got the car at the last minute, so it’s most up to date feature was a compact disc player. I’m realizing more and more that reading directions printed from googlemaps and listening to the same CD over and over again is so yesterday that it almost seems absurd. Having directions read to you, and having access to your own mp3 collection– or the ingenious personalized music program Pandora– is certainly the future.
Luckily at this point, every car released has some kind of voice command capability, and the kinds of tasks you can accomplish while driving seem to expand with each new release.
Today, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Toyota announced that it will release Entune, which uses Conversational Voice Recognition powered by Nuance, which the companies say will allow for drivers to use voice commands safely.
“Consumers have grown accustomed to having the world at their fingertips through their mobile phones,” said Jon Bucci, vice president of the Advanced Technology Department at Toyota. “And unlike other industry solutions, Entune allows the driver to interact with informative and entertaining mobile content without fumbling with their phone. We offer features that our customers demand and integrate them seamlessly in the vehicle.”
Toyota also stated that the Entune system will be compatible with most smartphones and feature phones. The companies also assert that they will offer the largest number of mobile apps with Bing, iheartradio, MovieTickets.com, OpenTable.com, and Pandora.
