Thursday, April 13, 2017

Amazon Opens Up Technology Behind Echo To Third Party Device Makers

Seattle-based Amazon.com is opening up the technology which powers Amazon Echo, and will make it available to third-party device makers, the company announced on Thursday. Amazon said its Amazon Alexa 7-Mic Far-Field Development Kit will allow other developers to build and launch their own devices with Alexa support, giving them a shortcut to the voice processing required to drive products like Amazon Echo. Amazon said the hardware-based reference solution uses a 7-microphone array, used in Amazon Echo, and also includes software for wake word recognition, beamforming, noise reduction, and echo cancellation. Amazon did not announce pricing on the new kit.