Voice Recognition Technology for Apple

Voice recognition technology, a feature users have been anticipating for some time, could come built-in to Apple's iPhone in the very near future. These revelations are based on a recent patent published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. According to the patent, Apple may be considering implementing voice control options as standard features in the iPhone. It notes that voice recognition technology could be incorporated in other products, such as Apple TV, the iPod, and the iTunes Store as well.

The patent also reveals that one of the primary elements of Apple's voice recognition technology is a hardware component known as a voice-to-command analyzer. This piece of hardware would determine whether the audio represents an action request or is meaningless, a factor that would spare associated processors from having to decipher speech. Once the analyzer determines an action request, a macro manager is triggered and executes the command from a library of predetermined vocabulary.

iPod Example

One of the most intriguing parts of Apple's voice recognition technology patent is voice control for the iPod. Here is how it could work:

Let's say you give a voice command by speaking "play Money". From there, the iPod would recognize that "play", the first portion, is supported by "Money", the second portion, indicating that it is the name of a song to be played on the electronic device. Another example would be giving a voice command by speaking the words "play 08", which could be a request to execute a playlist on the iPod labeled something like "Fall Jams 08".

iPhone Apps Example

As it relates to the iPhone, voice recognition technology would power many of the device's current applications. Here is how it could work with the Calender application:

The command of  "tell" could be used to communicate with everyone that needs to attend the meeting with a message. For instance, if you said "tell everyone to be present for the meeting at 11:00 am", the iPhone will interpret it as a request and send an email or text message to attendees letting them know what time to arrive to the meeting. When applying voice recognition technology to the iPhone's Camera application, the patent indicates that operations such as taking, deleting and saving pictures could be performed by one's voice.

Based on these examples, one could assume that Apple's voice recognition technology might possibly include adding voice dialing into the iPhone in addition to the features mentioned above. However, the patent is merely a block diagram of the iPhone which is classified as "device 200". Furthermore, the voice-to-command hardware component would obviously eliminate any possibilities of using voice recognition technology in the 3G or original iPhone.

It is important to remember that patents are simply published ideas, meaning there are no guarantees that we will see these features in the future. However, the iPhone has already experienced its share of apps built with voice recognition technology, including Where, VoiceDial and Cactus Voice Dialer. Rumors are also circulating about Microsoft developing an iPhone app with its TellMe service. When considering how Apple has been a major player in technology, it wouldn't be a surprise if the patent became a reality.