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Voice Activated MP3 player

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:23 PM
from the pushing-buttons-is-hard dept.
Media Music Technology
g0dsp33d writes "A US company is working on a voice controlled MP3 player for applications like cars where touch control is not as feasible. Considering technology like radar breaking and AI steering for robots, it reminds me of the possibility for a real life version of the car from Night Rider, KITT. Minus the cool jump effects, of course."
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  • One song you'll not be able to play (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:24PM (#11416474)
    "Stop, what's that sound." It'll shut off right after it starts.
      • ...a voice controlled MP3 player for applications like cars where touch control is not as feasible

        Good God! To think all these years I've been controlling my music without voice control when it is "not feasable." I must be a pretty amazing guy to pull this off!

  • Not for me, thanks (Score:5, Funny)

    by drivinghighway61 (812488) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:25PM (#11416480)
    I'll actually be avoiding this, as I don't want anyone else to hear that I'm listening to Britney Spears.

    Wait.

    Damn it!

  • KITT was in Knight Rider (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vietomatic (520138) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:26PM (#11416503)
    ...and ITT was in Night Rider.

  • Don't break the radar (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa (265275) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:27PM (#11416507) Journal
    How much training is required to operate this thing reliably? With voice training, you can get any piece of software to ignore non-operator commands.

    But I'm loath to sit out in the cold just to program the stupid thing in my sleigh.

    How big a deal is it to take a fraction of a second to change the song anyway? We do it all the time with the radio, A/C, and speedometer already.

  • Scenario (Score:5, Funny)

    by k4_pacific (736911) <k4_pacific@nOspam.yahoo.com> on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:27PM (#11416508) Homepage Journal
    I'm sitting in a crowded place, listening to the White Album on my new voice activated MP3 player.

    Me (quietly): Play Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.

    MP3 player: Please speak louder.

    Me: Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.

    MP3 player: Please speak louder.

    Me (shouting): Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey!!!

    Everyone turns and looks at me. I make a mad dash for the exit.

  • My two cents... (Score:3, Informative)

    by odano (735445) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:27PM (#11416509)
    I dont find using my radio while driving to really be that difficult. I don't even have to look at it to change CD, tracks or alter the volume.

    It seems to me that if the system was not perfect, IE it has common errors and played the wrong songs, that would make me more annoyed than the prospect of having to reach down to change something.

    I guess you can call me crazy, but I still like adjusting dials and getting some feedback when I change the volume or change tracks, and i'm not sure I would like a voice activated system.

    • Re:My two cents... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by }InFuZeD{ (52430) on Thursday January 20 2005, @12:17AM (#11416759) Homepage
      You seem to be missing the point.

      If your mp3 player has 3000 songs, and you're looking for one... you're gonna be doing quite a few clicks on that radio to get to it.

      The voice navigation will work a bit faster. Make that a lot faster.
      • If they try to recognize only a few preset commands (like "next song") it may actually work, but won't help a lot. If they try to recognize general vocabulary with lots of proper nouns, like song titles, it definitely will not work.
        • I have a phatbox [phatnoise.com] too (Nissan version). When you tell people it uses voice navigation, they automatically assume that you talk to it. But the way it talks to you is really ingenius. You don't need to look down to find the controls, because you already know where they are, and you don't need to read the display, because you hear the titles. Sure, pronounciation is not perfect, but I can figure out what it's saying, and would rather have that than be screaming "B-jork" (*you* you have to be mis-pronouncing

  • Wish the iPod had this... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeb39 (670045) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:28PM (#11416517) Homepage
    It's my biggest gripe with the iPod that nobodys built a voice activated accessory yet. When I'm drunk off my rocker and want to select a particular song, it takes forever. Overscroll, scroll back, overscroll, scroll back, etc. Very frustration. (I suppose it would also be useful when you've been running or just naturally get sweaty hands, as it's near impossible to use the touch wheel with moist fingers).

    Okay, so an interface like that with the iPod is probably not possible, how hard could it be to introduce it on new iPods? Just say a artist, song name or album and get zipped right to it!

    • Re:Wish the iPod had this... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Propagandhi (570791) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:35PM (#11416560) Journal
      I doubt the little CPU in the iPod is robust enough to provide any kind of voice recognition support. Not to mention those little mic accessories aren't exactly Hi-Fi, they're just unpowered microphones IIRC. Besides, this won't be the smallest software sweet, and I'm definitely not willing to give up a couple hundered mb's of space on my DAP just to look like a fool yelling at it belligerently...

      The way I see it one of two things needs to happen before this becomes truely feasible:

      1) Voice recognition software needs to become much more effiecient.

      -or-

      2) The low power\ultra compact CPU's in DAP's need get significantly more powerful..
    • When I'm drunk off my rocker and want to select a particular song, it takes forever.

      And it will be able to recognize slurred drunken speech?

      it's near impossible to use the touch wheel with moist fingers).

      Must resist. Too easy. Must resist.

  • This kind of tech is a little too CPU intensive for a normal Digital Audio Player CPU (some of them can't even keep up with Vorbis) so I don't think there's much of a chance this will make it into any kind of portable player, which is a pity. There are plenty of situations (at the gym, biking, canoeing) in which this could be useful.. provided it works, of course.

    Not a big loss, I guess, voice recognition software has always been a little sketchy (although I'm sure it's improved since my first experiences

  • you're fine until.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Elminst (53259) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:31PM (#11416538) Homepage
    They have a voice activated car with one of these in it....

    Telling it to "Back up" while you're cruising at highway speeds would end up with your transmission in the middle of the road and you looking at the bottom of a ditch!! ;)
  • I just don't think this is such a good idea. It would be great for cell phones (dial such and such), but for MP3 Players, I don't think that the technology is there, nor do I believe that anyone would want to use it. Imagine trying to play a song called "Sk8r Boi" or something similiar...

    On top of that, why not just use steering wheel mounted paddle controllers? They keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, and are very easy to access..

    • Re:Nah.. (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Imagine trying to play a song called "Sk8r Boi" or something similiar...

      That's not a bug, it's a feature.
    • Lots of newer cars already have buttons on the steering wheel that control the audio.

  • W00t (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:32PM (#11416548)
    This will now allow me to fulfill my David hasslehoff fantasy!

    -Kitt, find me some women!

    -I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave.

  • clapper syndrome (Score:4, Interesting)

    by evilmousse (798341) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:34PM (#11416552) Homepage Journal

    will it suffer from clapper syndrom, like when you have a stereo plugged into the clapper and the song includes clapping?

    idunno what the control words would be, but i bet there's enough songs with the word "louder" in it to make it suck.
    • Do you realize how easy this is to fix? Just cancel the stereo out of the mike feed before processing for commands. It's called echo cancelling, and it's a common part of any telephone system.

  • touch control isn't feasible? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dj42 (765300) * on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:36PM (#11416564) Journal
    Are there a bunch of armless drivers I'm not aware of? If you're too incompetent to take your hand off the wheel and adjust your music track, you probably shouldn't be driving anyway. Or allowed to own a car.

  • voice control is hard why? (Score:3, Informative)

    by mobiux (118006) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:44PM (#11416604)
    My cell phone can dial things now.

    My guess is that the player isn't going to sort your music for you, you will need to put it in the genre you want.

    Unless it's something really mind blowing, like it tells me what i want to hear next, and is actually correct, i am unimpressed.

  • Important site for carputers (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chairboy (88841) on Wednesday January 19 2005, @11:44PM (#11416605) Homepage
    If you're interested in puting a computer in your car and this article interests you, definately check out the following site:

    http://www.mp3car.com [mp3car.com]

    A lot of us hobbyists have done a lot of research and put a lot of computers in cars, with fabrication, touchscreens, DC-DC power supplies, and more.

  • I'm suprised Apple didn't do this...

    or Griffin, or some other accessory company.
  • ...it was Knight Rider.

    You just made me feel incredibly old. Damn you, you insensitive clod!

    But back on topic....

    Considering how complex the car of the Future!® is going to be, with navigation systems and such, keeping the driver's eyes on the road is going to be a priority. The less a driver has to futz around with his eyes off the road, even for a moment, and one hand off the steering wheel, the better.

    My question is how one goes about filtering the user's voice through the sound of the music.
  • Hrmm couldn't this be used somewhat similar to a turing machine, except with audio cues instead of shapes? If you can voice controll playlist orders, and you have mp3's with commands such as "add moveup3.mp3 to bottom of list remove moveup.mp3"(assuming this command will remove first instance of moveup.mp3) moveup.mp3 of course is a audio sequence that moves the last song up one position in the playlist. With a complex sequence of such commands, couldn't you implement a turing-like rules system in audio?
    • Sure could, lots of systems are turing complete - I've seen a universal turing machine implemented within Conway's Game of Life. It could do And, Or, and Not and that's all you need.

      Also, a lot of seemingly different mathematical systems are interrelated or can be transformed into each other. Look here [mit.edu] to see how computation can be expressed within four other ontological frameworks.

      Anyway, don't quote me on the above ( :^) this is /. after all) but I know for a fact that what your saying is a valid imp

  • asshole (Score:5, Funny)

    by anagama (611277) <thepotter.yahoo@com> on Thursday January 20 2005, @12:09AM (#11416728) Homepage
    Reminds me of the joke that goes something like this:

    • A lady goes to a car dealer to get a fancy car. The salesman shows her a model with a voice activated radio. He says "classical", and a classical station comes on. He says "rock" and a rock station comes on. Impressed, the lady decides to take it for a test drive. As she is pulling out of the lot, a car cuts her off and she yells "asshole" .... and Rush Limbaugh comes on.
  • Microsoft Voice Command provides a similar service for pocket pcs, through its integration with windows media player (for the pocket pc). I played with it, and it was novel for about a week, and then I realized that it was really not that difficult just to push one of the hard buttons, and I haven't used it much since. Though I must say I did attract some strange looks when I was shouting at my PPC.
  • Mac OS X already has voice recognition. Use a bit of Applescript, and with iTunes, you're off to the races..

    -jcr
  • Reminds me of a Bash quote...

    i got new car radio the other day, its pretty cool. you shout soul and it plays soul, you shout rock and it plays rock. the other day some kids ran past my car and i yelled "FUCKING KIDS" and it played michael jackson.

  • There is no facet of life couldn't be enhanced with a talking car.
  • I'd rather have everything displayed within an integrated HUD that is projected onto the windshield (I know this has been done just can't remember the make and model of the car) and then add eye tracking components. Want to go to the next track? Glance at the next track button on the HUD. That's a lot better than trying to get voice recognition software to operate in a very noisy environment (at least the noise would be the music itself and at worse include external road noises).
    And what if the music ha
  • I don't know just how sophisticated technology in these things would be, but theoretically it shouldn't be too difficult to keep an audio system from responding to commands issued by the audio file. Voice recognition is done by analyzing the signal from audio, a process known as digital signal processing. When the signal matches something the system knows to look for, the programmed response is called.

    A major problem with voice recognition technology is when the technology cannot differentiate the speaker
  • Just put the new Bose suspension system on the car if you want it to jump. Check out the last paragraph on page four of this article [popsci.com] for a description.

  • Ummm.. this already exists in cars (Score:4, Informative)

    by tm2b (42473) on Thursday January 20 2005, @04:27AM (#11417678) Journal
    Mercedes-Benz (or rather, Daimler-Chrysler), for example, has been shipping an electronics system, LINGUATRONIC [geocities.com] COMAND [geocities.com] (for Cockpit Management and Navigation), for at least three years that is voice controlled. Voice recognition controls the radio, the CD, the integrated Motorola telephone. A 30-word vocabulary doesn't sound like much, but it gets the job done.

    It's activated by a steering wheel stalk and is somewhat modal (but an MP3 player wouldn't have as many modes in the first place), but the hard part is all done by voice recognition.

    I'm pretty sure other car manufacturers are shipping similar systems by now.
    • iPod is better and iTunes is so great. I am completely happy with exactly what the iPod provides and I do not want any other options or features because it will cause the batter to wear down faster. The iPod just works and Apple design is the best.

      It is about style, not just about listening to music on a portable player. The scroll wheel is awesome, also the iPod battery lasts longer then you think and it can be replaced cheaply.

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