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Talk to your car with new tech

In some contexts, the technology wouldn't need to provide options. A request for a stock quote on Microsoft followed by the name Cisco would immediately prompt another quote, for example. The VoiceBox technology would learn from experience by recognising repeated requests for information and responding to personal preferences.

"It looks for clues in what you're saying and what you've said before to infer what you want, just like a human would," said Mike Kennewick, the founder's brother and current CEO of VoiceBox.

Mike Kennewick was a Microsoft business development executive for Windows in the 1980s. The brothers teamed up with two friends to found the company in 2001. It now employs more than 40 speech-recognition engineers.

According to Toyota and industry analysts, VoiceBox is one of only a handful of companies working on conversational voice-search technology.

OnStar, the telematics company inside General Motors, has long been an advocate of voice recognition in cars. Coming up to its tenth anniversary, OnStar has 4 million subscribers and its hardware is set to become standard equipment in GM cars by 2008. With the system, drivers push a button and talk to consultants to report an accident or unlock a door. (The company does about 1,000 airbag calls a month.)

Drivers can also make calls from a built-in voice-activated mobile phone if they sign up with a programme. "When you push a button, the radio mutes automatically," said Chet Huber, president of OnStar. "We use voice recognition so your hands are on the wheel. You can say 'call home', and it will call home."

Other big players in advanced search recognition, or voice recognition, include IBM, Microsoft and ScanSoft. Microsoft, for example, sells voice-recognition technology with its operating system for cars, but the system responds to commands rather than to contextual speech.

VoiceBox executives think the large companies are potential partners. Toyota, for example, plans to use VoiceBox technology on top of IBM software.

Microsoft's voice technology will be available in European cars made by Fiat next month. Fiat, which owns Alfa Romeo, will offer voice-command features for mobile phones and digital music players that can be hooked up to nearly 23 models of its cars, through Windows Mobile Automotive technology.

Honda's Acura runs Microsoft's car operating system, but its speech recognition is provided by IBM.

Johnson and VoiceBox have a commercially ready product that integrates voice commands in 'centre stack' software and hardware so that if a phone, MP3 player or handheld has Bluetooth support, it will let a person dial by voice or ask for songs. For its iPod search tool, Johnson worked with Apple. The Mac maker has said a large number of its iPod consumers use the music player in the car. The technology is commercially ready and lets drivers use voice search for songs in the car.

For XM Satellite Radio, VoiceBox is likely to be a welcome feature, because it can give people easy access to relatively unknown features, like regular traffic updates, sport scores or stock quotes. People can say: "What's traffic like on 101?" and VoiceBox will tick off an answer. XM Satellite plans to introduce the product in the middle of this year.

Gartner's Koslowski said that Apple is also probably working with the car industry on voice technology, as well as developing it in-house. He also suggested that all the Internet search companies such as Google will probably look at markets like the car business, in which people need to search for files but don't have use of their hands.

"Consumers fundamentally want voice to work -- it's in our imagination with shows like The Jetsons and Star Trek," Kennewick said. "We think this will be a more compelling experience for people."

CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.