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TomTom GO 910: Human traits
Tuesday March 21, 2006 - The new TomTom GO 910 does text-to-speech. We've got a bit more info for you about this exciting new functionality.
A completely new feature in the TomTom GO 910 is the text-to-speech functionality. In other words: the possibility to convert written text to spoken words by means of software.
For this the software uses human sounds and intonation to make sure the spoken word sounds natural. This enables the GO 910 to say streetnames and road numbers out loud. All this is done in an effort to make navigating with your TomTom even better.
Loquendo
For this new GO 910 feature, TomTom decided to use the software developed by Turin based company Loquendo, which is specialised in artificial speech-technology. Yes, that's indeed Turin, Italy.
This company has the technology to offer text-to-speech voices in a lot of languages, most of the times in both a male and a female variant. Of course, both UK English and US English are available. So let us present to you: Simon and Kate, both UK English voices, and Dave and Susan, both US English voices. These are the real Loquendo voices, which means they are also the voices present on the TomTom GO 910. Click on the icons to hear a voice sample:
You have to imagine that the voices of the 910 will sound even more realistic than these examples. This is because the GO 910 also uses Loquendo's 'Automotive Solution'. Part of that solution is a set of texts which are optimized for navigation. Think samples like "in 100 meters...", "on the roundabout..." and "go left..." here. By means of 'ordinary' text-to-speech it's possible to add very specific information to the instructions like eg.:
But that's not all this technology can do. It also enables the GO 910 to say it's Traffic information out loud, as well as incoming text SMS messages. The same goes for the weather forecast and the POI warnings.
The software is also capable of recognising foreign places and street names, and pronouncing those very properly. This means the English voice can pronounce French street names eg. But it goes without saying that for an optimal result, the native language of the location you're driving in needs to be selected.
Emotion
Not truely important for navigating, and so it isn't a part of the GO 910 software, but still nice to know nonetheless: Liquendo is the first company that has perfected the intonation which is added to the spoken text in such a way that adding credible emotion to the text becomes possible. This can be heard in this small soundclip:
The text-to-speech option of the GO 910 will be available in eight different languages: German, UK English, US English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portugese and Dutch.