Nuance’s Dragon Drive Powers Automotive Assistant in Toyota Concept-i User Experience Concept Vehicle

LAS VEGAS and BURLINGTON, Mass., Jan. 09, 2018 -- CES 2018 -- Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN) today announced that its Dragon Drive connected car platform powers the automotive assistant in Toyota’s user experience concept vehicle, Toyota Concept-i. Concept-i is being showcased at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and features the latest automotive innovations, including automated technology, emotion detection, and more.

Dragon Drive leverages conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to power Concept-i’s fully customized automotive assistant. Features include voice-controlled restaurant and point of interest search, navigation, Q&A, sports information, and integration with content providers like HERE and Yelp.

Dragon Drive’s conversational AI is powered by contextual reasoning, using knowledge, context of current and past conversations, and awareness of personal preferences to understand and complete complex requests and tasks. Working with Toyota’s emotion estimation engine, Dragon Drive’s conversational AI can also take a user’s emotional reaction and attention into account to deliver an intelligent conversation with optimal results.

“We’re laser focused on Dragon Drive innovation that will meet the needs of the connected, automated car of the future. That’s why we’re well-poised to support Toyota’s Concept-i, an amazing representation of what the future of automotive will look like,” said Arnd Weil, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Automotive. “Using conversational AI, we’ve built a platform that’s optimized for the Concept-i experience, providing an assistant that can listen, understand, anticipate, respond and proactively engage with drivers to meet their needs.”

Dragon Drive will interact with Concept-i drivers through a combination of its automotive-grade signal enhancement and acoustics innovation with ambient wake-up, hybrid embedded-cloud speech recognition, and text-to-speech. In addition, Dragon Drive utilizes natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language generation (NLG) to enable users to have an intelligent and intuitive conversation with the automotive assistant, using their own words and with responses that mimic natural human speech. NLG will be showcased for the first time in the Concept-i at CES 2018.

Dragon Drive powers more than 200 million cars on the road today across more than 40 languages, creating conversational experiences for Toyota, Audi, BMW, Daimler, Fiat, Ford, GM, Hyundai, SAIC, and more. To learn more about the ways in which Dragon Drive is amplifying the intelligence of the connected car, visit Dragon Drive on nuance.com. To learn more about Concept-i, visit the Toyota press room. CES attendees can also check our Concept-i in person at the 2018 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas from January 9-12, 2018.

About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world.  Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications.  For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Nuance Communications, Inc.
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