As touch becomes taboo in covid situations, Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant put to more use
In a global suddenly fearful of contact, voice technology gets a fresh look.
Voice-activated systems such as for example Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple’s Siri have observed strong growth in recent years, and the virus pandemic could accelerate that, analysts say.
Voice assistants aren't only answering queries and looking, but also appearing used for smart home control and for a variety of organization and medical applications that could see increased fascination as people search for to limit personal contact.
“Voice has recently made significant inroads in to the smart home space and voice control often means avoiding commonly touched surfaces about the home from smartphones, to Television remotes, light switches, thermostats, door handles and even more,” said analyst Jonathan Collins of ABI Exploration.
The pandemic will probably provide “additional motivation and incentive for voice control in the house that will help drive awareness and adoption for a variety of additional smart residence devices and applications,” Collins said.
ABI estimates that voice control device shipments for smart house devices hit 141 million this past year, and in 2020 will grow globally by close to 30 percent.
For the broader market of voice assistants, Juniper Research estimates 4.2 billion devices used this season, growing to 8.4 billion by 2024, with a lot of the interactions on smartphones.
Smart locks, doorbells
Collins said he likely to see growing fascination in smart locks and doorbells, and also other smart home systems, to eliminate the necessity for personal call and face-to-face interaction therefore of the pandemic.
Avi Greengart, a technology analyst and consultant with Techsponential, said data isn't yet available but that “anecdotally, voice assistant usage is way up” consequently of lockdowns.
Greengart said he expects a wider range of organization applications for voice systems in response to health insurance and safety concerns.
“Excited, office spaces will need move towards even more touch-free controls; voice could be a remedy, although movement triggers for light can often be easier and extra friction-free,” he said.
“However, I do expect smart speakers-along with an emailed set of commands-to be considered a common feature at hotels and other rental properties. The fewer touch tips, the better.”
Post-pandemic outlook
Chris Pennell, a Futuresource analyst, said he expects adoption of digital assistants is likely to accelerate, “especially in consumer facing areas such as for example health care, retail and entertainment.”
One example of the already in use is normally a Mayo Clinic program using Amazon Alexa that allows people to determine their symptoms and access facts on the virus.
Various other medical applications are also on the works for voice technologies.
Veton Kepuska, a Florida Tech laptop engineering professor who specializes in speech recognition technologies, is wanting to develop voice-activated medical robots which can help limit physical contact and contagion.
“If we'd this infrastructure in place, we would have already been better off today,” said Kepuska, who was simply spurred by the COVID-19 outbreak to seek funding for the research effort.
Kepuska said this work could lead to a good “humanoid” medical robot that may take over many responsibilities from doctors or perhaps nurses with voice conversation.
