Talking car technology is on the way

Up until now, all the experiments with voice-activated features on our cars, the blend of computerized telephone and automatic controls -- telematics, as the car geeks call it -- has been pretty basic. But Visteon Corp.'s announcement today of a partnership with a leader in innovating voice technology is another indication that those car-voice-computer applications are about to get a whole lot more sophisticated and useful. All of the car makers and suppliers, of course, are working hard on voice technology, prompted to a large degree by the safety issue of driver distraction caused by all these gizmos competing for driver attention. As a reflection of that, Visteon is announcing today that it will work with Boston-based SpeechWorks International to develop and commercialize new speech applications in cars. SpeechWorks already provides text-to-voice applications for clients including America Online, United Airlines, Federal Express and Fidelity Investments. SpeechWorks (www.speechworks.com) uses a proprietary voice recognition technology called ETI-Eloquence that processes and controls multimedia and telematics products. Based on the powerful VoiceXML standard, it improves the speed and accuracy of voice-controlled commands and has the potential to run everything on a car's dashboard, says Mike Phillips, chief technology officer for SpeechWorks. Visteon and SpeechWorks envision a day when cars are constantly hooked up to the Internet. They see on-board car computers that, on a voice command, can access files from laptop and handheld computers, read them, let you edit them and send them.