Vesper, developer of the world’s most advanced acoustic sensors, DSP Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:DSPG), a global provider of wireless chipset solutions for converged communications, and Sensory, Inc., the leader in voice interface and keyword-detect algorithms, will demonstrate a turnkey development platform that boasts the lowest overall power consumption for far-field always-listening voice interfaces. This platform is the first to achieve overall power consumption low enough to enable battery-powered always-listening far-field systems.
“Today consumers who want to turn on their battery-powered smart speakers, TV remotes, smart home systems and Internet of Things (IoT) devices have to push a button to wake their device from sleep. This limits consumers’ ability to interact seamlessly and naturally with their devices, leaving them tethered to touch,” said Matt Crowley, CEO, Vesper. “The Vesper-DSP Group-Sensory development platform offers an alternative technology based on the fundamentally different physics of piezoelectric materials that wakes devices from sleep, while sipping mere microwatts of power. Due to the rugged nature of piezoelectric microphones, this platform is also ideal for systems that need to survive outdoors or in harsh environments.”
Crowley added, “The Vesper-DSP Group-Sensory wake-on-sound platform consumes 5x less power than existing approaches, potentially allowing products to run for years rather than months without battery replacement.”
The new development platform – which the companies will demonstrate at CES 2017 for the first time — integrates Vesper’s VM1010 wake-on-sound piezoelectric MEMS microphone with DSP Group’s DBMD4, an ultra-low-power, always-on voice and audio processor based on Sensory’s Truly Handsfree™ voice control embedded algorithms. The platform gives developers the ability to initiate voice processing through Sensory’s wake-up word technology, which ensures that only a specific trigger word activates the device.
“Our development platform enables and dramatically accelerates time to market for far-field voice-controlled battery-powered consumer electronics,” said Ofer Elyakim, CEO, DSP Group. “It gives OEMs and integrators a fully integrated solution for consumer electronics that actively listen and sense both voice activity and commands while in near-zero-power mode, alleviating battery strain, improving device usability, and extending battery life.”
“Voice-activated battery-powered consumer electronics, such as smart speakers and TV remotes, are proliferating,” said Todd Mozer, CEO, Sensory, Inc. “The Vesper-DSP Group-Sensory development platform — which features the same Sensory TrulyHandsfree voice activation algorithms that have already shipped in over 1 billion devices — is a major advancement in speeding the design-to-deployment cycle of keyword-activated battery-powered electronics.”
Vesper, DSP Group and Sensory will demonstrate their new development platform from January 5-8, 2017 during CES 2017.