Sensory Introduces New Speech Recognition Microcontroller

Low-Cost RSC-464 Enables a New Class of Applications

SANTA CLARA, Calif., August 30, 2005---Sensory, Inc., the world leader in embedded speech technologies, today released the RSC-464 integrated circuit as the latest member of the RSC-4x family. It joins the RSC-4128, one of the most widely deployed speech recognition ICs, in providing speech recognition, synthesis and system control on a single chip. By balancing features required for everyday electronic devices with the costs required to meet customer expectations for those products, the RSC-464 opens up a new market for speech recognition control. The RSC-464 also comes to market supported by a powerful suite of easy-to-use tools. "The RSC-464 is an invitation to every manufacturer of electronics products to add speech to their human interface", notes Todd Mozer, Sensory's CEO. "If an electronic product has a user interface, it can have a speech user interface added for very little incremental cost, and the RSC-464 makes this practical."

RSC-464 Supplies General Control with Speech I/O

Sensory's RSC-464 integrated circuit allows manufacturers to replace existing 8-bit microcontrollers with a voice-enabled solution, which is becoming increasingly more popular as recognition technologies become more accurate and pricing drops. The RSC-464 is a powerful general-purpose microcontroller inside a speech recognition system-on-chip that includes 16-bit ADC, DAC, digital filter unit, math unit, 4K RAM, 64K ROM, output amplification, timers, comparators and more. Sensory's aggressive pricing also invites its use as a slave for speech recognition, voice biometrics, and speech and music playback. The slave approach makes it easy to add to existing product designs with minimal changes to the primary controller software. The RSC- 464 IC sells for under $1.10 in large volumes, making it a strong option for use as a replacement for an existing microcontroller or as a slave.

RSC-464 Implements New FluentChipTM 2.0 Technologies

A variety of technologies in Sensory's world-class FluentChip firmware library run on the RSC-464, including speaker independent (SI) recognition, speaker dependent (SD) recognition, speaker verification (voice password) biometrics, voice record, speech compression/playback and MIDI-like music synthesis. Just released, FluentChip 2.0 offers new options for combining SI and SD in a single command set, allowing for personalization that was never before possible. Also available is a new technology that allows the RSC-464 to control mouth movements of animated dolls so the movements appear naturally in time with speech. Together, it is now possible to create a product that "understands" speech out of the box, can be trained to recognize a particular person's voice, and also generates movements that makes the product appear to be more natural and lifelike.

Development Tools Enable Rapid International Vocabulary Development

Sensory's Quick T2SITM(Text to Speaker Independent) Toolkit complements the RSC-464 as it allows for rapid creation of speaker independent command sets by simply typing in the desired recognition vocabulary as text. The recognition set of words or phrases can then be downloaded onto the included RSC-4x Demo/Evaluation Board for quick prototype creation and testing. This process yields a proven recognition set in a matter of minutes. Using state-of-the-art Hidden Markov Modeling combined with advanced neural networks, the need for user training is eliminated. These recognition technologies are derived from a database of sampled speech and are based on the rules of phonology - the environment in which sounds occur in languages. This process significantly accelerates adding new languages to Sensory's speaker independent technologies. This unique approach is now available in U.S. English, German, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese, with UK English and French available later this year. Compressed speech is now available in any language as well, so products can truly "talk and hear" around the world.

Additional tools include Quick Synthesis, which allows fast development of speech output files by recording and compressing a file with the touch of a button, and also supports easy scoring of MIDI-like music. A fully-integrated IDE for software development is provided by Phyton, Inc., including assembler, linker, debugger and file management, as well as an optional C compiler to accelerate coding.

About Sensory, Inc.
Sensory, Inc. is the world leader in embedded speech technologies. Sensory offers a complete line of IC and software-only solutions for speech recognition, speech & music synthesis, speaker verification and other voice and audio technologies. Sensory's customers are leaders in consumer electronics and include Avon, Fisher-Price, Hasbro, JVC, Kenwood, Matsushita, Mattel, MGA, Mitsubishi, Radica, Sega, Sharper Image, Sony, Tektronix, Toshiba, Uniden, and many others. The Interactive Speech(tm) line of low-cost ICs includes the award-winning RSC Series (general-purpose microcontrollers using FluentChip technology for speech I/O), SC Series (music and speech synthesis) and the SVC voice biometric chips. Sensory's FluentSoft embedded software products are available on a range of hardware platforms from microcontrollers to DSPs. Sensory, Inc. is located at 1991 Russell Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95054-2035. The company can be found on the web at www.sensoryinc.com.

About Phyton
Phyton has over 15 years of experience in designing and supplying high-performance development tools for embedded microcontrollers used by electronic engineers and programmers in the industrial control, communications, computer and consumer electronic industries. Phyton's development tools support the 8- and 16-bit embedded microcontrollers of semiconductor industry leaders. Phyton's address is 7206 Bay Parkway, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11204, and on the web at www.phyton.com.

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