Have we already adapted to Voice Assistants on our gadgets? because things are just about to get serious with the new Google car assistant. At the recently concluded CES 2018, automobile companies announced that they are ready to release cars with voice assistants. Of course, we know the big guys in the voice assistant tech sector: Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana, and Siri.
However, it would surprise you that during this year’s CES, Siri didn’t quite catch up. The automobile companies only mentioned that they would be working with Google Assistant and Alexa. Well, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana actually work together, so that means that Cortana is not left out. Interestingly the voice assistant sector now has a new member from Nvidia, specially made for cars.
Meet Your New Driving Personal Google Assistant
Google Assistant
Google has already tested waters with their Auto Android, which allows users to issue commands through Google Voice. This year they are introducing their AI, Google Assistant to cars. With the Google Assistant in your car, you would be able to stream music, and remotely control your devices at home. Since Google introduced their smart home devices last year, it has been well accepted. The company is set to achieve the same results with Google Assistant in cars.
Alexa
The major contender for Google in this sector is none other than Amazon’s Alexa, which will be added into Toyota, and Lexus cars this year. We have no doubts that Alexa would be great in cars, they already proved that with the Echo Dot, which can do everything from playing music, to reminding you of your to-do list, to connecting with your devices. All was made possible with Alexa being Echo Dot’s digital assistant, so having Alexa in your car would make for a fun yet informative ride.
AI
Nvidia are new in the voice assistant sector but it doesn’t look like they are playing, you really can’t call them rookie because they are up to standard. Automobile companies that are working with Nvidia will have NVIDIA DRIVE PX hardware coupled with the IX software in their cars. All to make the assistant, AI super effective on the self-drive cars that will have it, which should start selling in 2018. Nvidia are going to give self-drive car enthusiasts a run for their money, because the AI will be able to do fantastic things like HD mapping of your environment as the car is driven automatically or as you drive. It has sensors, and cameras that shows you a 360 view of what is happening around you. I must say that I would really love to drive one of the cars with this super-impressive Deep Neural Networks (DNN) technology.
Our Verdict
Despite all the terrible things critics say about AI, we have to give it to this new innovation. Since self-drive cars will soon become mainstream, and IoTs are also becoming more accepted. It will be complementary to have voice assistants in cars. For us at Tecrada.com, we love everything about the Google car assistant, although we are not quite impressed with Alexa because Echo Dot isn’t all about navigations and maps, we hope that they will improve on this when Alexa gets her own seat in the cars.