A talking washing machine on display at CeBit this week could pave the way to home electrical devices that respond to voice commands--and can even help inexperienced users to operate them

The German company Speech Experts is demonstrating a prototype of the machine with voice-recognition capabilities at the CeBit technology trade show, held this week in Hannover, Germany. Called Hermine, the device is being developed in partnership with Siemens, but Speech Experts believe that a commercial model could be in stores as early as 2004--if their prototype proves popular enough. Hermine is designed to help people who are foxed by the complexity of modern washing machines, with their wide variety of program types. Speech Experts demonstrated on Wednesday that when a user told Hermine what clothes they needed to clean, it could tell how they should be washed. Hermine could also be programmed by voice--understanding commands such as "prewash," "press wash cycle at 60 degrees Celsius," or "wait 30 minutes before starting." Speech Experts have also tried to give Hermine something of a personality. When told that a certain garment has been stained with red wine, it responds by recommending beer in future--as beer stains are easier to remove. Upon being told that some diapers had to be washed, the electronic washing machine emitted an anguished yelp. This version of Hermine has a vocabulary of several hundred German words, but Speech Experts explained that a future version would be designed to understand up to 4,000 words in several languages.