The First Smart Speaker from Apple: A Strong Design and How It Is Perceived

For this edition of The Audio Voice, I intended to focus a bit more on the latest developments in the fascinating world of sensors and how it impacts product development and design in all applications areas, particularly in consumer electronics, automotive, and health applications. After writing previously about Apple - the sensors on the Apple Watch and the surprising firmware updates for the AirPod Pro earbuds - I really didn't want to go back to Apple. But as always, Apple has a way of surprising us exactly when we least expected, and the company made another important audio announcement.

CEVA and Fluent.ai, a leading provider of on-device, multilingual speech understanding solutions, announced a partnership to offer ultra-low power speech-to-intent solutions for intelligent edge devices. Fluent.ai’s suite of speech-to-intent technologies has been ported and optimized for CEVA’s low power audio and sensor hub DSPs, providing a high performance, robust solution for OEMs and ODMs looking to integrate intelligent voice activation and control into their wearables, consumer devices and IoT products.

Swedish companies Acconeer, Imagimob and Flexworks decided to join forces in a project to develop gesture-controlled in-ear headphones. Using the profound expertise of the three companies, the project will be a unique combination of research in advanced radar technology, expertise in AI (deep learning) and expertise in designing and manufacturing consumer electronics products. A first working prototype is expected within the first year of the project.

Microchip Technology is determined to meet the growing need for power-efficient inferencing in edge applications by making it easier for software developers to implement their algorithms in PolarFire field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). As a significant addition to its solutions portfolio in this segment, Microchip’s VectorBlox Accelerator Software Development Kit (SDK) helps developers take advantage of Microchip’s PolarFire FPGAs for creating low-power, flexible overlay-based neural network applications without learning an FPGA tool flow.