Ivan Tashev (left), Yun-Cheng Ju, and Mike Seltzer (at wheel) demonstrate their Commute UX driving simulator.

Ivan Tashev, Mike Seltzer, and Yun-Cheng Ju, of Speech Technology, leading a research project “Commute UX,” an interactive dialog system for in-car infotainment that makes finding a person to call or song to play easy and efficient, using natural language input and multimodal user interface. “People in their cars more and more,” Seltzer says, “and they’re trying to do more and more while they’re driving. We’re trying to figure out how we can enable people to do at least some of things they would like to do in a way that’s safer and more natural. “Those things’re correlated. If you could just speak to system as you would to a passenger, you wouldn’t need to remember hundreds of commands and all rules of how to use system. You could keep your brainpower focused on driving, keep your eyes on road and your hands on wheel, and, hopefully, you’d be safer on road.”

More info: Microsoft Research