Tata cars and SUVs in India will soon get an Indian vernacular voice assistant that has been co-developed by Mihup Communication, a Kolkata-based start-up and Harman International.
Mihup says its solution, christened ‘AVA Auto’, addresses all the opportunities for improvement specific to the earlier voice assistant from the carmaker. While select Tata cars and SUVs were provided with an in-car voice assistant, it had a limited dictionary and regional languages support was absent.
The new system offers online, offline, and hybrid connectivity options among other features and supports ‘Hinglish’ (Hindi and English). The system responds based on user voice command without the need for a manual switch. The company aims to introduce AVA support for ‘Tamilish’ (Tamil and English) and ‘Benglish’ (Bengali and English) soon, with a plan to cover all major Indian languages by 2022.
After assessing multiple use cases and languages, the product will soon go live on Tata cars and SUVs. The offline (Voice AI on the edge) model has been deployed on variants of the Tata Altroz premium hatchback and Tata Nexon compact SUV.
AVA allows the driver hands-free, voice-based control for important car functions and control. It provides natural language support for making phone calls, playing music from USB, supporting navigation commands and also for vehicle information.
