Why do appliance manufacturers make smart voice on air conditioners?

When you call a voice assistant to search for information, ask about the weather, or control a smart home device, what device does it usually use?

Smartphones, which everyone has, and smart speakers, which have entered many homes through price wars and marketing strategies, are perhaps the most mainstream answers. There is also a group of users who will interact with the smart home via their air conditioner and voice assistant.

There is an air conditioner on the market that has advanced features such as self-cleaning, rapid cooling and low noise. It also meets the latest energy consumption standards, but provides the ability rarely associated with air conditioning in public perception -- intelligent voice interaction. When the air conditioner is connected to the Internet, users can use it like a smart speaker and control the temperature as well as other appliances of the brand.

A good air conditioning, how to turn into a "large smart speaker"? Home appliance manufacturer takes this step chess to aim at what, bring such innovation on air conditioning to whether to exist actual value again?

What's missing from a good air conditioner for voice interaction?

Let's start with the question of how good a home intelligent voice interaction experience can be.

In the current mainstream view, the intelligent voice in the home should be able to receive the expected response wherever it is issued. The voice can be clearly and accurately recognized, the voice assistant can understand the semantics and respond, and other smart home devices can be controlled by voice interaction. Therefore, the voice interaction center must have excellent voice capability, with AI at the leading level and access to as many devices as possible.

The smart speaker corresponds to the above requirements one by one: the special hardware specifications and the characteristics of long time plug enable such products to use continuous working microphone array, large size speaker, and thus have accurate voice acquisition capability and high level audio playback capability; The Internet company behind it has accumulated a lot in speech recognition, AI interaction, smart home platform and so on, so it can build such a device.

Smart speaker as the entrance of the smart home experience, is also the current number of users relatively more mainstream solution. After issuing the voice command, I have already completed the technical verification and the early iteration of the intelligent assistant on the mobile phone, and carried out the recognition with high accuracy in a short time, and then gave the feedback/carried out the corresponding operation directly, or called the home equipment mentioned in the instruction.

The smart TV that becomes the control center of the smart home is similar to the smart speaker, which can pack enough strong hardware and turn on for a long time. The status of the home entertainment center also makes it easier for the elderly and children to use. Nowadays, smart TV with voice and smart home access function is the most popular transformation export for most traditional home appliance manufacturers when facing the new revolution of home appliance industry.

The air conditioner, which is also an essential household appliance in most Chinese homes, lacks the temperament of a family center, and lacks the strong public attribute of visual interaction provided by TV, so few people associate it with intelligent voice. Even if it does have the capability, at first glance, it looks more like the "spare tire" of a smart speaker supplied by an appliance manufacturer.

The hardware of air conditioning is also a big difficulty for smart home entrance. Both internal and external machines have motors to rotate to realize the refrigeration and heating capacity, so the influence of wind noise on speech recognition and voice interaction must be reduced as far as possible. And let those who are used to unplugging without using it know that the voice assistant's air conditioner is actually less power-hungry.

Another difficulty is the comprehensive software capabilities including voice assistant and smart home platform, which is not too difficult for Internet manufacturers to launch smart speakers, but for the relatively weak traditional home appliance manufacturers, they may need more resources to make up for lessons. Or plug in an external voice recognition capability, as some TV makers have done, or build it from scratch.

Air conditioners provide home intelligent voice capability. There are many difficulties from the beginning of the concept. What specific experiences do they bring to the various intelligent voice air conditioners that have been launched?

Air-conditioner manufacturer's AIoT "Landing Craft"

Network in intelligent voice air conditioning to be more friendly discussion, most voice say air conditioning don't need to do these and the function of the room is not close, both voice interaction and the supplementary function of speakers are manufacturers improve price means, lack of actual use value, "it has the look of air conditioning air conditioning".

According to the evaluation of the e-commerce platform and the discussion of the user community, there is no interference between the voice and the air-conditioning function, and the voice interaction is so easy to use that "you can forget that the remote control ever existed". Some of the products do not restrict the experience because of the identity of "intelligent voice", but have quite complete offline interaction ability, which can adjust the working state of air conditioning by voice without Internet connection.

If you happen to buy other appliances of this brand, you can quickly match them through the Internet, Bluetooth and other means, so that you can use the whole smart home experience without too much involvement of mobile phone, and the learning threshold is closer to traditional appliances. Behind the intelligent voice air conditioning, home appliance manufacturers, whose main track is the category of air conditioning, are indeed playing their own differentiated hand card.

To sum up, the intelligent voice air conditioning, which is well received by users, organically combines voice interaction, smart home and air conditioning functions in one mu and three quarters of its own land. It is not a chicken product misunderstood by people. Of course, most of the high-end products have not been popularized to the mainstream model, which is a pity in this stage as the direction of innovation.

Intelligent voice air conditioning is a positive call for home appliance manufacturers to embrace the new era. Manufacturers who will launch such products are usually those who have devoted many years to air conditioning and use air conditioning as the main track.

Although the crossover phenomenon of home appliance brands has become more and more common in recent years, it may not be the best choice for manufacturers who are not good at intelligent devices to use new species such as smart speakers as the central entrance to smart homes.

The cloud and cloud interconnection that can integrate the smart home experience of different manufacturers has not been fully developed, and there are still "islands" between brands that cannot be connected, and the intelligent experience is limited to a single device by the objective environment. It is feasible for home appliance manufacturers with strong air conditioning category to build voice recognition air conditioning products to build smart home strategy.

In the category of air conditioners in which you are best at, making products that meet the needs of The Times and do not deviate from your original capabilities is obviously the path to success. From the perspective of consumers' recognition of intelligent voice air conditioning and the foothold of smart home experience centering on air conditioning, these manufacturers have grasped the entry ticket of the new era of home appliances, in which intelligence becomes more and more important.

The success of intelligent voice air conditioning is hard to replicate

We still need to pour a pot of cold water, intelligent voice air conditioning has received positive market feedback, does not mean that any home appliances can become a smart home center entrance.

AIoT is very important, but hard work is not sweet. Without the necessary conditions, such as the research and development strength of air conditioning manufacturers to integrate voice and air conditioning functions, the courage to promote the joint work of multiple categories of home appliances, and the AI technology reserve of Internet manufacturers, the products created may be meaningless, with only voice but no experience.

However, the possibility that home appliances can support voice interaction or access TO AI cannot be completely blocked. The ability to access the platform as a sub-center of a home or to provide computing power is the intelligent voice experience ability that most home appliances can achieve. Mainstream smart home platforms are welcoming new members, making this direction possible.