Alango and Seeed Collaborate on Voice Interface Far-Field Technology

June 1 2018, 01:00
Alango announced its collaboration with Seeed Technology providing far-field voice enhancement on the Seeed ReSpeaker Core v2.0. Seeed's ReSpeaker Core v2.0 is designed as a multifunctional development board for voice interface applications. The platform is based on the Rockchip RK3229, a quad-core ARM Cortex A7, running up to 1.5GHz, with 1GB RAM. The board features a six-microphone array with Alango's Voice Enhancement Package "VEP" and is able to be customized upon request.
 

Alango's VEP is a set of software technologies comprised of a multi-microphone beamforming array and echo canceller, which supports far-field speech recognition enhancement in smart home products, mobile phones and automotive voice-controlled applications. It is configurable from one to 16 microphones depending on the use case and available computational resources. VEP has been ported and optimized to efficiently run on many popular computational platforms.

"Voice-interface and control is becoming mainstream but there are many companies that do not specialize in this technology and find it difficult to integrate all the various pieces. The ReSpeaker Core v2.0 allows companies to efficiently develop high performance voice-interface products without having to master the aspects of audio and other technology integrations. Alango is pleased to cooperate with Seeed and aid in their efforts to make voice-interface and far-field technology available to a large audience of developers," Dr. Alexander Goldin, Alango founder and CEO, says.
 

"Offering only a hardware platform for developers to implement voice-interface is not enough. We are excited to offer quality voice enhancement algorithms fit for a professional setting with Alango," adds Eric Pan, founder and CEO of Seeed. "Enabling developers by aligning the technology they need will quicken the adoption of voice-interface throughout numerous industries. Working with great partners like Alango is key in supporting our users."

Alango Technologies Ltd. is a leading developer and licensor of front-end DSP technologies for voice communication and mobile audio. Alango's technologies can be found in voice controlled and IoT products, in-car infotainment systems, after market hands-free car kits, navigation systems, mobile phones, Bluetooth headsets, audio conferencing systems, intercoms, assistive listening devices, security and military applications.

Seeed Technology Co., Ltd. designs electronic modules for developers and DIY projects, as well as a supplier of rapid prototyping and small batch manufacturing services based in Shenzhen, China, with offices in San Francisco. Seeed partners with technology providers to bring a wide array of hardware platforms and sensor modules to market through its website seeedstudio.com. 
 

Complementary to the Seeed ReSpeaker Core v2.0, Seed now introduced the ReSpeaker Mic Array v2.0 platform for developers, an evolution of the original ReSpeaker Core and the ReSpeaker Mic Array launched on Kickstarter in 2016. The ReSpeaker Mic Array v2.0 continues to have the onboard hardware enabled audio processing, now with better algorithms than its predecessor had, using full-duplex AEC (Acoustic Echo Cancellation) with barge-in support. The new ReSpeaker Mic Array v2.0 reduces the microphones from 7 to 4, lowering the cost of the board, while the updated algorithms actually enabled improved voice processing quality, thanks also to the improved ST Microelectronics' MP34DT01-M digital MEMS microphones.

The ReSpeaker v2.0 uses beamforming to separate out different voices, and it offers de-reverberation and noise suppression. The system provides -26 dBFS omnidirectional sensitivity, 63 dB SNR, and a 120 dBSPL acoustic overload point. Users can connect the $69 device via its micro-USB port to any computer that supports USB Audio Class 1.0 (UAC 1.0), including all modern Linux, Mac, or Windows computers. Linux computers, such as the original, Linux-based ReSpeaker Core board, are recommended “for firmware updates,” says Seeed.
www.seeedstudio.com | www.alango.com
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