Beyond Google Auto

At the past Google IO, Google showed their upcoming version Android N. This version already contains parts that aim at usage in our cars. Previously, Google's efforts towards infotainment systems were bundled in Android Auto. Here, the smartphone had to be connected via USB to the car to use the screen on the dashboard as a screen for your device.

Android Auto (from http://www.digitaltrends.com/infotainment-system-reviews/android-auto-review/)

This worked only if the car's infotainment system supported that. Some tuners, like the Kenwwod DDX9902S, allowed for expanding these capabilities if replacing the current tuner.

Now, this is no longer necessary since the functionality is already built into the OS. This makes it applicable even to older cars. If the car has WLAN as it is available in newer cars, the user also does not need to fiddle around with USB any longer.

Here are some impressions taken from http://www.automotiveitnews.org/articles/share/1481628/

The center of the screens shows the navigation app while the the top and bottom portion of the screen is available for additional information

When initiating a phone call, only the center screen changes

When initiating a phone call, only the center screen changes

While many car manufacturers fear that their brands may become commodity devices, Google already made the next step and provided their answer to the question: Yes, the car will become a cradle for your smartphone.

Silent Speech Recognition

A somewhat interesting read on how we will talk to computers in the near future is here: http://www.wired.com/2015/09/future-will-talk-technology/

Still Smartphones are vision-centric device, as already discussed in http://schnelle-walka.blogspot.com/2015/12/smartphones-as-explicit-devices-do-not.html .Currently, I see people holding their smartphones in front of their face to initiate, e.g., voice queries starting by "OK Google" or similar. So, it is not needed to look at their phone to learn about the manufacturer of their phones. Moreover, since voice is ubiquitous, you will also learn their plans. A more subtle way seems to come with subvocalization. It exploits the fact that people tend to form words without speaking them out loud. Avoiding subvocalization is also one of the tricks to speed up reading http://marguspala.com/speed-reading-first-impressions-are-positive/

Subvalization slows down your reading speed

It is still an ongoing research topic in HCI, but I wonder how mature it is. Will it be useful at all? Or will we get used to people talking to their phones, gadgets or whatever in the same way that we got used to people having a phone call while they are walking?

Another interesting alternative comes with silent speech recognition. Denby et al. define it in Silent Speech Interfaces as: Silent speech recognition systems (SSRSs) enable speech communication to be needed when an audible acoustic signal is unavailable. Usually, these techniques employ brain computer interfaces (BCI) as a source of information. The following figure, taken from Yamaguchi et al., about Decoding Silent Speech in Japanese from Single Trial EEGs: Preliminary Results, are suited to describe the scenario.

Experimental setup for SSI from Yamaguchi et al.

In their research they investigated, among others, how to differentiate the Japanese words for spring, summer, autumn and winter. They were able to proof that this setup works well, but the results are still far from being usable at all.

But does this kind of interface makes sense at all? It might be useful in scenarios where noise is omnipresent and kills all efforts towards traditional speech recognition efforts. A car is one example. However, the apparatus needs to be less intrusive for this.

Smartphones as Explicit Devices do not meet Weiser's Vision of Ubiquitous Computing

Mars Weiser uttered the vision of the invisible computer as "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it." He mainly based his vision on the observation that the cardinality of human-computer relation was changing as shown in the following figure.

Human-Computer relation over time (from http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/5184/)

However, we are not there, yet. Currently, I see people holding their smartphones in front of their face to initiate, e.g., voice queries starting by "OK Google" or similar. So, we are not using everyday objects that we encounter in our daily lives to interact with them but use a vision-centric device as our key. As a results screen sizes are still increasing during the past years.

Smartphone Screen Size Over Time | SpecOut

One of the drawbacks of this vision-centric key to smart spaces is that is is by no means hands-and eyes free. Google and Siri are continuously improving the voice capabilities of their personal agents but they still rely on manual interaction and force the users to look at the screens. It appears as if we forgot about the "invisible" attribute of Weiser's vision. Invisible meaning that we did not perceive it as a device. Today, the smartphone is still an explicit device.
One day, in the very near future, we will have to decide if this is the way to go. Do we want to reuse this thing everywhere, while we are walking the streets, in our cars,...?

Maybe, this also(!) motivates the wish for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay to have the car as another cradle for your smartphone.

Scenarios like those described in http://www.fastcodesign.com/3054733/the-new-story-of-computing-invisible-and-smarter-than-you are still far away. A video demonstrates their room E.

Prototypes like this are already existing in the labs and maybe, it is time to leave the labs.

Amazon Echo is, maybe, a first step in this direction. As a consequence, it became the best selling item above $100 http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/1/9826168/amazon-echo-fire-black-friday-sales

In contrast to the scenario in the video above, users do not need to speak up. It can be used for voice querying and controlling devices http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-echo-and-alexa-the-most-impressive-new-technology-of-2015/ So, let's see how this one evolves with regard to Weiser's vision. Maybe, we see comparable approaches soon.

Microsoft researchers expect human like capabilities of spoken systems in a few years

Researchers at Microsoft believe that we are only a few years away from equal capabilities of machines to understand spoken language as humans do. Although many advances have been made in the past years there are still too many challenges that need to be solved.This is especially true for distant speech recognition that we need to cope with in daily situations.  Maybe, their statement is still a bit too optimistic. However, as systems are available already and people start using it they are right in their assumption that these systems will make progress. We just have to make sure that voice based assistants like Cortana are used at all. Currently some of these systems seem to be more a gimmick to play with until users become bored of it. Hence, they are actually dammed to improve fast to also be helpful. 

http://news.microsoft.com/features/speak-hear-talk-the-long-quest-for-technology-that-understands-speech-as-well-as-a-human/