Product/Service Overview

"Car Navi Time" turns your smartphone into a car navigation system

Navitime Japan offers a full-fledged car navigation app called "Car Navitime" that turns your smartphone into a car navigation system. When using your smartphone as a car navigation system, you need to secure it in place using an in-car smartphone holder.

Introduction Background

The need for a speech recognition engine that can adapt to the noisy in-car environment

Compared to in-car navigation systems, smartphones often have smaller screens, so if there was something that could be operated by voice, it would make driving more convenient, safe, and comfortable for users, and we wanted to realize voice recognition. However, there is a lot of noise inside the car while driving, including vibrations, so we need to achieve high-quality voice recognition. We faced the challenge of finding this difficult to achieve with open source or voice recognition engines that come standard with the OS.

Key Drivers of the Adoption

High reliability due to voice recognition accuracy, ease of integration, and support system

The sample SDK we received was easy to use, and we were able to easily introduce the voice recognition engine into our app. Also, when we actually ran a test drive in a car, the recognition accuracy was very high, and we felt that the technology was reliable. We also received prompt and flexible responses to any questions or requests we had before the implementation, which was a major factor in giving us confidence in their future support.

Introduction Results

AmiVoice's "Voice Control" is one of its main features

"Voice Control" has become one of the main features of Navitime Japan's "Car Navi Time." It has received very positive feedback both from within the company and from actual users, and we believe that we are able to provide a service with high usability. Just as the possibilities of telephones were dramatically expanded by switching from keyboards to touch panels, we believe that the possibilities of car navigation systems will also be dramatically expanded by switching from manual control to "voice control." Not only will this eliminate the need to look at the screen, but we hope that anyone will be able to use it easily, simply by speaking naturally to "Car Navi Time" to tell it what they want to do, without having to remember specific operating methods.