Vision and Voice are central to how we perceive the world.
However, until recently, the vision has simply overtaken and overwhelmed our imagination. First, it was color screens, then touch screens, 3D, and now augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), the progress has been staggering.
Somehow sound has not witnessed similar progress and contribution from inventors during this period, and it will not be an exaggeration to say that until recently, a picture was worth more than 1000 sounds.
Nevertheless, this has changed dramatically in the recent decade, good research, and newer innovations elevated our experience with voice-based technologies.
Today you cannot imagine a smart home without smart speakers and in time to come, they will be an essential part of how we are going to operate our home devices, shop on e-commerce (also called voice commerce), and connect with other people.
According to a report published by SAR Insight,nearly 6 billion devices are expected to have voice interfaces supporting features such as voice triggers, voice biometrics, and embedded digital assistants by 2023. So, it would not be surprising that in the next 5 years, voice will become an intuitive way to interact and operate with these devices and will replace touch interfaces or buttons.
However, that journey is going to be arduous because not only users should have a seamless and easy experience using voice technologies but at the same time, interaction should be secured and hacks-proof.
Hidden beneath the ocean of various sound-based technologies, there is a technology called ‘data over voice’ also popularly known as ‘data over sound’ that started generating waves and interests in product innovations.
‘Data over sound’ uses the fundamental principle of encoding information or data bits over sound waves and gets it transferred by a device with a speaker and then that gets received and decoded by a device with a microphone. This technology is using the basic premise of conversation, like humans, devices can also talk to each other but of course in a cryptic way such that only devices can understand and not interrupt humans like us.
How the ‘data over sound’ is unique as compared to other voice technologies like speech recognition is that it perfectly fits into the transition between the world we are living in and the future world we are going to see.‘Data over sound’ does heavy lifting in terms of providing both ease and security utilizing the fact that smartphones have become our go-to-interface for everything.
Imagine today you do not have to carry your wallet for money, a physical id card for your identity proof, or physical keys for opening your doors. Your smartphone has become an all-in-one solution. But if you will see the backend technologies that enable all these interactions, there are too many and they are too fragmented. Your smart door uses wifi to unlock the door, you transfer your payments through QR code or NFC and transfer your id to the authentication validator using Bluetooth. And that’s the reason you need so many different applications and user interfaces in your smartphone to do these actions and simply forget about interoperability.
‘Data over Sound’ can bring order to this chaos and a universal approach to enable these interactions, elevating user experience and ease of use. Companies like Trillbit have shown what kind of future lies with this technology and how omnipotent this technology can be for all walks of life. It will make smartphones more powerful in terms of becoming an all-in-one tool for payment, authentication, control access, and data communicator running with the unity engine of ‘data over sound’.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft said “The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.” And that’s what ‘data over sound’ will be for us, getting ingrained in our smart devices and paving the way for device interactions in the future.
Contributed By Shashikant Burnwal, Co-Founder & COO, Trillbit
