At AT&T Labs, universal translators and wearable keys

AT&T announced that in June it would be opening up its Watson speech recognition APIs, which will enable developers to build their own speech-enabled apps and services. AT&T has licensed that research in the past to companies just as Vlingo however this represents an possibility for all kinds of developers to speechify their apps. It as well brings a challenge to Nuance, which has been lining up developers.

The APIs will focus at first on web search

The APIs will focus at first on web search, local business search, Q&A, voice mail to text, SMS, U-Verse’s electronic programming guide, and a dictation API for THE general use of speech recognition. Other APIs for gaming and social networking will be available henceforth.

At the event, AT&T demonstrated how its translation research allows for simultaneous translated conversations between two people speaking Spanish and English on different devices. Users can speak into a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) app using one language and the AT&T innovation is able to simultaneously transcribe and at that time translate the content into another language. AT&T already has a Translator mobile app that works with six languages nevertheless that requires both users to speak into one device. This holds the promise of people carrying on translated conversations anywhere in the world, similar to how TDD works for the speech or hearing impaired. The translation API is not but available yet will be released at a later date for developers.

One of the other cool demonstrations at the AT&T Labs event involved bio-acoustic data transfer. The innovation uses sensors in a phone to recognize and transmit signals through a body using bone conduction. When touching a door handle, a user could put their finger on a transducer on their phone and push out a digital key that gets transmitted through their body and is received by a sensor in the door, which unlocks when it recognizes the key. The door would only unlock when it receives the in a class by itself signal that’s created by that person’s skeletal structure transmitting the original key. That could be an interesting alternative to other access methods that rely on biometrics or NFC.

But another intriguing scenario is being able to transfer data back and forth between two users with a handshake. If both people have their hand on their phone’s sensor and an app running, they can transfer a small amount of data back and forth through their touch. The two devices would recognize each other when the two people come in contact and would negotiate the transfer. Only a small amount of data — enough for a business card or small image — could be transferred in the time it takes to shake a hand. Nevertheless it could an alternative to a Bump or NFC data transfer. Some companies are working on transferring data through galvanic skin response yet AT&T said that requires daily calibration and can be more inconsistent.