Hyundai is gearing up to offer customers a new in-car voice control system that will integrate with numerous vehicle functions and even connected devices at home. Hyundai will preview the tech next month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and bring it to production models starting in 2019.

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As we march into the future of personal automotive transportation, technology like voice recognition software is becoming increasingly important. As more and more features are added to cars, voice control becomes a necessary tool to keep drivers focused on the task of driving.

Hyundai’s latest development in this space is called the Intelligent Personal Agent. Created with help from SoundHound, a tech firm based out of Santa Clara, California, Hyundai says the Intelligent Personal Agent will acts as a “proactive assistant, predicting driver needs and facilitating vehicle functions.”

Users activate the system by saying “Hi, Hyundai,” then speaking their desired command. The system will cover all the basic voice activated stuff, such as making phone calls, sending texts, searching for navigation destinations, searching for music, checking in on weather conditions, managing schedules, activating the climate control, opening and closing the sunroof, and locking/unlocking the doors.

However, Hyundai’s Intelligent Personal Agent will also be proactive, with features like providing a reminder regarding an upcoming meeting, or suggesting a new departure time based on current traffic conditions. The system will also offer “Car-to-Home” services to control various connected devices and systems in your apartment or house.

Powering the system is SoundHound’s “Houndify” artificial intelligence platform, which is used to identify the various commands of the user. This also enables multiple command recognition – for example, Hyundai says you could say something like, “Tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow and turn off the lights in our living room,” and the system will perform both commands independently.

The Hyundai Intelligent Personal Agent will initially only support English commands, but the automaker says it plans to expand support to include other languages sometime in the future.

A simplified version of the tech will see use in the brand’s Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles, which will be offered for test drives in the near future. Anyone interested in getting some hands-on experience can also head over to Las Vegas for the tech’s debut at CES in January 2018, where it’ll show in prototype form via a demo connected car cockpit.

References

Hyundai Tucson

Read our full review on the 2015 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell.

Read more CES news.