After the much-awaited launch of Amazon’s Alexa and the hype produced towards marketing industry, this technological advancement is expected to produce a revolution in several sectors. Smart Devices like refrigerators, televisions, security systems and even washing machines are slowly introducing features along the lines of artificial intelligence to the service of a much comfortable lifestyle; but how do these discoveries can help our driving experience?
Ford partnership with Amazon for introducing Alexa as its driving assistance may be seen as the first serious step towards self-driving cars, but actually, there is more than just the thrive of automation and deleting the human factor in the overall driving process: voice search engines can be used as tools for improving our on-route performance.
How does Voice Search work
The first aspect this stunning software needs to work is a medium. For this reason, Amazon released their Amazon Echo products, but similar approaches were seen before with the introduction of Siri and Cortana for smartphones.
The sole reason why Alexa caused such an uproar is directly tied to the fact that it converts voice recording in commands that are lately interpreted in an almost human-based recognition system. Siri, whereas powerful, failed to compel the task under many scenarios, being frustrating and imprecise for being a reliable source of daily life experience. However, given the impact of Alexa, competitors are looking for more precise ways of answering their customer’s needs, leading to considerable improvements by both Siri and Cortana to still be considered in the market.
After content is interpreted, the Voice Search software will start looking through the internet to locate what its owner wants. Key stages of this process are the user’s personal search history among engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo, while another aspect is directly linked to SEO strategies and product reviews made by companies.
Products with the highest ranks that go along the lines of what could be defined as “user’s taste” (information provided by search history) are going to be displayed either as the only result for what the user is looking, or a reduced list of up to 10 products. Fast, efficient and reliable without even needing manual inputs.
Avoiding Traffic Jams
One of the much-awaited features to introduce with the help of voice search technology is to reduce the impact of traffic jams in driveways. How could that be possible? Let’s picture the following scenario.
You need to do the grocery, but certain items weren’t available at the store closer to your place. Therefore, you need to visit another place.
Instead of the normal approach, which would be heading to a larger store that probably has it, you can simply ask your voice search assistant to show you the route to the place closer to your location that sells such product. Not only the driving assistant will lead you through the fastest route available to reach that destination, but also is likely to introduce yourself to new places. Pretty cool, right?
Photo courtesy of Stanley Nguma
By putting these concepts in a practical resolution method, driveways or huge convenience stores won’t see their capacity overloaded, thus providing a prime-quality service would be a necessity to attract customers.
A Real-Life Feedback
Would you picture yourself improving your driving skills each time you take the wheel? Such thought could be possible if we think of a way in which the driving assistance system would tell the user an “evaluation” of the overall driving performance of that day, week or month at a selected moment.
With the most recent traffic regulations uploaded in its database along with advanced knowledge of driving techniques, mechanics, etc. this could easily become the answer for fixing those aspects of our driving style that drive us nuts.
Parking problems? Not anymore if the assistant can give you exact audio instructions to do your best each time you drive.
Finally, another considerable aspect voice assistance services could add a feedback on how the car is doing: if there is a potential failure, if the vehicle needs more air in one of its tyres, if tyres are losing its marks, when to perform an oil change, when was the last time you checked water levels or breaking discs, and so on.
