Audeme Announces Their Cloudless Arduino Speech Dialog Shield, MOVI(TM), Is Now Publicly Available to Customers

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 5, 2016) - Audeme, an auditory sensor and solution provider that enables the maker community with audio recognition products, announced today the availability of MOVI™, the first cloudless speech recognizer and synthesizer for Arduino. MOVI makes speech recognition and synthesis easily accessible via a simple programming interface to makers of all technical levels.

MOVI™, a speech recognition and voice synthesizing Arduino shield, can be easily programmed from the Arduino IDE, allowing users to have the shield recognize up to 150 of their own full-sentence voice commands. MOVI™ is speaker independent and can carry programmed conversations with projects using the speech synthesizer. MOVI™ is privacy-friendly, and doesn't require an Internet or PC-connection. Compatible with most Arduino compatible boards, MOVI™ retails for $89.90.

In July 2015, Audeme ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to make MOVI™ commercially available. The campaign was completed on time and within the allotted budget with all Kickstarter rewards sent by February 2016. From start to finish the project took just 10 months, with the first working engineering prototypes arriving in October 2015, initial production of MOVI™ in December 2015, with the product now in mass production. The company has had ample time to oversee a small production run to meet the needs of its early backers, as well as to iron out any hardware and software issues. Audeme presented MOVI™ at the Bay Area Maker Faire 2015 where it won a Maker Faire Editor's Choice Award. Following the success of the campaign, Audeme is expanding the availability of MOVI™ to the market.

"We believe there's a need for 'Siri-like' speech recognition with everyday objects, but it shouldn't be held back with an Internet connection requirement," said Bertrand Irissou, CEO at Audeme. "With the addition of an Internet connection, one faces connectivity issues, privacy concerns, and so on. The list of applications that need this type of speech recognition is extensive, including home alarm systems, home automation, games, as well as applications to help those living with disabilities."

"By abstracting the complexity of speech recognition, our patent-pending speech recognizer training methods combined with a completely open-source software interface makes programming and training of Siri-like dialog systems a trivial task," said Dr. Gerald Friedland, CTO at Audeme. "As few as 4 lines of codes is all that's required to start recognizing an English sentence. Before MOVI™, creating a speech dialog system required specialized companies and hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're excited to eliminate those complications and obstacles."

The open source community has already ported MOVI™ to two other platforms: Raspberry Pi and the Huzzah esp8266 from Adafruit. Audeme expects that other makers, including those within the robotics domain, IoT and connected devices will become more interested in MOVI™ and Arduino for speech recognition capabilities.

About Audeme
Audeme is an auditory sensor and solution provider that enables the Maker community with audio recognition products. Founders Bertrand Irissou and Gerald Friedland are long-time makers with over 40 years of combined experience in speech and hardware. Irissou has been building circuits for over 25 years and founded Asic Advantage, INC, a fabless IC manufacturer acquired in 2011 by Microsemi Corporation. Friedland has contributed to the academic and open-source communities for over 15 years through his research at UC Berkeley and other places.