14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is one of the companies investing aggressively in digital assistants, and despite rumors that it may give up on Cortana, the software giant doesn’t seem to consider such an option.
Instead, what Microsoft wants to do is to make using digital assistant a more natural thing, and to achieve this goal, it’s looking into ways to improve the interaction with such a technology in different scenarios.
One of them is a crowded environment where talking to a digital assistant is kind of awkward, and Microsoft believes that a technology called Silent Voice Input could help deal with this.
Basically, Microsoft says that by implementing a new system that would make it possible to send voice commands to a digital assistant either by whispering them or by bringing the device close to the mouth would be both ways to overcome the odd moment described above.
Used on a wide variety of devices
The patent that describes the technology explains that such an approach could be used on phones, smartwatches, and even other devices, and this could be an indication that it may eventually be implemented on non-Microsoft products as well. Of course, if it ever gets the go-ahead.
“Compared with conventional voice input solutions which are based on normal speech or whispering that use egressive (breathing-out) airflow while speaking, the proposed “silent” voice input method is performed by using opposite (ingressive or breathing-in) airflow while speaking,” the patent reads.
"By placing the apparatus (e.g. microphone) of the apparatus very close to the user’s mouth with an small gap formed between the mouth and the apparatus, the proposed silent voice input solution can capture stable utterance signal with a very small voice leakage, and thereby allowing the user to use ultra-low volume speech input in public and mobile situations, without disturbing surrounding people. Besides of air flow direction (ingressive and egressive), all other utterance manners are same as our whispering, so that proposed method can be used without special practice.”
Obviously, it’s important to keep in mind this is still in patent stage and time will tell whether it’s advanced enough to reach mass production or not.