How it works: voice controlled cars

For over a century, scientists and precocious kids have dreamed about two-way conversations with artificially intelligent machines. Don't believe it? Look at Knight Rider. There's the robot from Rocky IV too, but that's not quite as relevant to us. Still, who didn't want a car they could have a proper old chinwag with? And in fact, which perfectly sane adult would say no to that possibility today?

Believe it or not, as in-car voice recognition gets better, we're getting closer to that reality. Ok, so our cars might never be advanced enough to be our 'partner' and give us advice on the quickest way to catch a perp or what to order at Burger King, but it will become more adept at understanding what we ask of it, regardless of the thickness of our accent or how abstract our request. So let's have a look at where voice recognition started, where it is today and where it's going.

Beginnings:

American telephone research company AT&T Bell Laboratories is credited with showcasing the first working speech recognition system in 1952, though in those days the system was such that the environment had to be completely silent, and it had to be 'trained' to recognise a particular voice. It could only acknowledge a handful of instructions too.

But we're not interested in speech recognition systems per se here, rather how they've featured in our cars. However, the systems did need to develop somewhat from those early days to the point where they could recognise any person's voice amid the normal ambient road, wind and engine noise of a car.

In-car systems:

As with all new technology, the first in-car voice recognition systems appeared in luxury cars, and it's still the case today that they're more 'normal' in top end models; the Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 Series and Lexus LS600h have voice recognition integrated into their standard satnav and multimedia systems. Jaguar first introduced its speech recognition ten years ago with the S-Type in 1999.

But what began as a 'luxury' item sold firstly for its convenience is now more a safety feature and is available on a host of more accessible cars, including the Honda Civic and the Ford Focus. As with all technology, that's because it's getting cheaper and better: Mercedes-Benz's 'Linguatronic', for example (which is available from the C-Class saloon upwards in the maker's range) can recognise thousands of words, including 'casual' language use, like using "ok" in place of "yes".

And with the plethora of gadgets in modern cars, voice recognition is of genuine safety benefit because it negates the need to use fiddly buttons or negotiate tricky menus. The Lexus system enables users to ask for a restaurant nearby, change a CD track or set the temperature of the climate control - which is far less distracting than trying to find the appropriate switch among the myriad littered around the LS cabin. It's as simple as pressing a steering wheel button and saying the command.

The future:

Voice recognition is even now in its infancy - there's still something very novel about asking a car to do something and watching it oblige - but some very clever people are working on making the technology turn us into far less distracted drivers. Software giant Microsoft, no less, has an auto division dedicated to developing such technologies - and currently works with Fiat on the Blue&Me hands free system.

Better integration of in-car multimedia with voice recognition is in the immediate future, especially with the dawn of roaming Internet in our cars (which is not too far away). You'll be able to ask your car to, for instance, download a particular song or album to the hard disc drive, and then listen to it a few miles down the road. The software itself will get better at recognising colloquialisms and local dialects - something sadly lacking in current systems - which will bring us closer to that feeling of 'talking' to the car like The Hoff. Cool.

Plus, with the introduction of 'self-driving' cars - a technology Volvo is currently working on - there's every chance that at some point in future we can simply tell the car where we want to go, then sit back and relax as we're taken there...

Mark Nichol