NXP fully integrated development kit offers far field voice control at the edge

Far-field offline voice control technology from NXP Semiconductors has reached full availability, giving OEMs a fully integrated development platform with a full hardware module design and associated software, according to a company announcement.

The SLN-LOCAL-IOT solution provides everything needed to implement far-field voice control using a customizable wake word and local commands, and addresses market demand for embedded voice control in the smart home, commercial, and industrial markets. The solution is powered by the i.MX RT106L crossover microcontroller (MCU), which allows OEMs to drastically reduce system cost and time to market with complete and production-ready technology.

The voice control delivered by the technology is private and secure, providing hands-free operation with low latency. The local voice capabilities are delivered by an integrated automated speech recognition (ASR) technology based on machine learning, supplied through a partnership with Sonos. On-device processing avoids the cost and complexity of cloud connectivity and protect user privacy, NXP says.

“The collaboration with NXP to launch an industry-leading solution based on Voice Commands by Sonos (Nasdaq: SONO) provides a new level of flexibility and speed for OEMs seeking to quickly develop and bring to market advanced offline voice control solutions that offer end-users completely seamless experiences at home and at work while eliminating any privacy concerns,” says Joseph Dureau, VP of Voice Experience at Sonos.

The i.MX RT106L is the edge member of the i.MX RT1060 family of crossover MCUs, and was launched last September along with an edge facial recognition MCU. NXP claims its advanced implementation of the Arm Cortex-M7 core operates on the MCU at speeds of up to 600 MHz. The processor runs Sonos’ machine learning front end for far field audio, as part of NXP’s turnkey software solution for local voice control. Beyond voice control, the MCU can also function as the main microcontroller for most IoT implementations.

The SLN-LOCAL-IOT development kit has a manufacturers suggested retail price of $149.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  biometrics at the edge  |  machine learning  |  microcontroller  |  NXP Semiconductors  |  speech recognition  |  voice biometrics