Sensory Releases TrulyNatural – Embedded Deep Neural Net Speech Recognition – Faster, Increased Privacy, and More Reliable than Cloud-Based Approaches

Jibo, Inc., creators of the first social robot for the home, signed as first TrulyNatural customer

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 13, 2015 -- Sensory Inc., a Silicon Valley based company focused on machine learning techniques to improve the user experience and security of consumer electronics through state-of-the-art embedded voice and vision technologies, today announced the release of TrulyNatural™, a breakthrough client-based large vocabulary speech recognition platform that offers substantive advantages over cloud-based solutions from the industry giants, while offering industry-leading accuracy, and a more consistent and secure user experience. Additionally, Sensory announced today that it has signed Jibo, Inc., creators of the world's first social robot for the home, as its first licensee of TrulyNatural.

"Over the years, Sensory has pioneered many speech technology trends, most recently with our always-on, always-listening speech solution TrulyHandsfree, a technology that many in the industry thought was impossible to achieve because of the difficult requirements of both high accuracy and low power consumption. We are confident that we have another ground-breaker on our hands with TrulyNatural," said Todd Mozer, CEO of Sensory. "Working with Jibo, Inc. as our premiere customer for TrulyNatural is particularly exciting because they have some of the world's leading speech technologists on their team. We know TrulyNatural will be in the hands of experts who can fully utilize the many advantages of our breakthrough approach!"

Sensory uses a unique form of a neural network with deep learning to achieve acoustic models an order of magnitude smaller than the present state-of-the-art. These neural networks employ the most recent breakthroughs in speech feature extraction to produce superior accuracy in real world noise. Combining this with a very efficient Finite State Transducer (FST) enables accurate processing of multiple large search domains as required in today's marketplace.

"We wanted a natural language interface that would just work, and we didn't want to be tied to a cloud connection. The Jibo team was familiar with Sensory's excellent reputation from their TrulyHandsfree approach, and when we learned about TrulyNatural, it became an easy choice to work with Sensory," said Cynthia Breazeal, Founder and Chief Scientist of Jibo, Inc. "Sensory's technologies have a reputation of strong performance and accuracy. We find it particularly comforting that Jibo, the world's first social robot for the home, can process all speech data received by its users internally, opposed to having to be reliant on a strong and stable internet connection for cloud processing of speech."

Custom designed and developed at Sensory with over 50 man-years effort by a team of speech technologists, TrulyNatural was designed to be:

• Natural – capable of allowing users to speak to their devices naturally as they would to another person
  
• Consistent – the solution works exactly as it should with or without an internet connection
  
• Scalable – ideal for smaller footprint device requiring vocabularies of a hundreds of words in under 1 MB of memory to smartphones, cars, and robots that require more natural language interfaces that still fit on device
  
• Fast – with search taking place on the client device instead of the cloud, requests are processed without delay. Because Sensory has focused on reduced MIP implementations, the result is a faster response time with any given power level
  
• Accurate – delivers an industry's best <8% word error rates (WER) for 1 million entries using native speakers. Better than many published benchmarks for cloud based solutions
  
• Flexible – TrulyNatural can be used in combination or without cloud based solutions, and can take industry standard components for language models to make development faster and easier. Grammars and language can be used separately or together
  

TrulyNatural is initially released for US English, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Japanese, UK English, French, Spanish and German, with Italian, Portuguese, and Russian to follow this year. SDK's are available for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and other leading platforms. Jibo robots are planned to be demonstrated in 2015 and released in 2016 with a TrulyNatural natural language interface.

For more information about this announcement, Sensory or its technologies, please contact sales@sensory.com; Press inquiries: press@sensory.com

About Sensory Inc.
Sensory Inc. creates a safer and superior UX through vision and voice technologies. Sensory's technologies are widely deployed in consumer electronics applications including mobile phones, automotive, wearables, toys, IoT and various home electronics. With its TrulyHandsfree™ voice control, Sensory has set the standard for mobile handset platforms' ultra-low power "always listening" touchless control. To date, Sensory's technologies have shipped in over a billion units of leading consumer products. Visit Sensory at www.sensory.com.

About Jibo, Inc.
Jibo, Inc., creator of the world's first Social Robot and Open Platform, is a design-driven company dedicated to creating unforgettable experiences through advanced robotics technological innovations.  The Company was founded by Cynthia Breazeal, a pioneer of social robotics and human robot interaction from the MIT Media Lab.  Jibo is a capable and engaging family companion.  He is able to get to know his family, learn from them and adapt to their preferences overtime. With the Jibo SDK, developers have the tools to create and build a wide range of Jibo Skills (robot applications), extending Jibo's personality and capabilities in the home. Jibo was brought here to provide fun, help and companionship to everyone in the home. Get to know Jibo today at www.jibo.com. 

TrulyNatural is a trademark of Sensory Inc.