June 10, 2022 Fluent.ai and Knowles Unveil Future of Embedded Voice

Innovative small footprint embedded voice recognition revolutionizes the smart home white goods user experience.

NUREMBERG – Fluent.ai, a leader in embedded speech recognition solutions, today announces its expanded partnership and collaboration with Knowles Corporation (NYSE: KN), a market leader and global provider of advanced micro-acoustic microphones, speakers, audio processing, and high-performance capacitors and RF products, to deliver fully offline, noise robust and multilingual/multi-accent voice control for washing machines and other home appliances.

“The use-case possibilities are endless with our joint solution for embedded voice control with Fluent.ai. From our original partnership integrating our technology into TWS earbuds, we have since evolved it to the control of smart home appliances. The current experience of controlling your appliances with voice using a smart speaker offers a poor customer experience – one which is difficult to install and has latency as the appliances have to wait while the voice command makes its round trip to cloud and back. Moving the audio processing to the edge embedded in white goods solves this to create an easy-to-use and responsive voice interface. Fluent’s technology helps us fit voice UI into a cost-effective module with a large library of voice commands and phrases to control white good appliances,” said Mehul Kochar, Sr. Director Business Development, Audio Solutions at Knowles.

Fluent.ai is upending the way people experience voice-enabled smart home appliance control. Its patented speech-to-intent technology leverages natural and flexible voice commands to trigger essential appliance actions. Its new reference design allows users to activate 39 different washing machine settings through 472 unique voice command phrasing options without the need for a cloud-based voice assistant.

Fluent’s AI software does more with less — more commands and phrasing flexibility in a small footprint. The white goods reference design improves the washing machine user experience through hands-free, low latency offline voice command control that protects user privacy, all while providing a noise robust solution to cancel out background appliance sound and other noise. The software resides locally on Knowles’ AISonicTM Audio Edge Processor IA8201, which does not use data from the cloud, meaning Fluent’s technology works completely offline, without the need for a WiFi connection. This provides OEMs a seamless, no lag, exceptional voice control solution for white goods appliances. The combined technology can support any language or accent, allowing OEMs to ship a single product SKU to cover a wide geographic and linguistic market, and provides significant BOM cost reduction for OEMs looking to add voice recognition to their home appliance products.

“We are excited to grow our partnership with Knowles, a global leader in audio solutions, and expand the use of our combined technology to white goods appliances,” said Probal Lala, CEO of Fluent.ai. “Fluent’s software is noise robust, which is key for filtering through loud background noise of appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, kitchen range hoods and more. Our embedded technology enables users of any language or accent to command appliance tasks hands-free and without the need for internet connection. We expect this collaboration will also significantly reduce hardware BOM costs for OEMs due to the elimination of components required for cloud-based voice recognition solutions.”

Fluent.ai and Knowles will jointly demo the offline voice control reference design for washing machines and other white goods appliances ahead of and at embedded world 2022. For more information or to book a demo, email contact@fluent.ai.

To learn more about Fluent.ai, visit www.fluent.ai, and additional information on Knowles can be found at www.knowles.com.

About Fluent.ai
Fluent.ai Inc. is a Canadian speech recognition software company founded in 2015. Fluent.ai’s mission is to voice-enable the world’s devices, allowing everyone to be understood by their technology. Through nearly a decade of research, the company developed a range of speech recognition AI software products for consumer device manufacturers. Fluent.ai’s offline, noise robust and multilingual/multi- accent solutions deliver unprecedented accuracy along with a highly customizable user experience with the goal of finally breaking the barriers to global adoption of voice user interfaces.

About Knowles
Knowles Corporation (NYSE: KN) is a market leader and global provider of advanced micro-acoustic microphones and speakers, audio solutions, and high-performance capacitors and RF products, serving the consumer electronics, communications, medtech, defense, electric vehicle, and industrial markets. Knowles uses its leading position in SiSonic™ MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) microphones and strong capabilities in audio processing technologies to optimize audio systems and improve the user experience across consumer applications. Knowles is also a leader in hearing health acoustics, high performance capacitors and RF solutions for a diverse set of markets. Knowles’ focus on the customer, combined with unique technology, proprietary manufacturing techniques, and global operational expertise, enables it to deliver innovative solutions at scale across multiple applications. Founded in 1946 and headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, Knowles is a global organization with employees in over a dozen countries. For more information, visit knowles.com.

Media Contact
Monica McShaffrey
Uproar PR for Fluent.ai
mmcshaffrey@uproarpr.com

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