The Basic Operation Principle and Core Technology of Smart Speakers

The smart speaker mainly realizes interactive operation through the user's voice commands to provide content and services. The working principle of the smart speaker is that the built-in voice interaction system collects the user's voice and reduces noise through the local processing unit and audio decoding unit of the voice algorithm. Recognize the wake-up word, then convert the voice signal into a digital signal, and upload it to the cloud server after processing. The cloud server encodes and understands it, and then transmits the information to the smart speaker. The smart speaker then restores the digital signal through the sound effect unit. for the voice signal and play it out.

　　1. So, how does a smart home work? Next, let's take a look at the basic working principle of a smart home.

　　First of all, we need to understand the necessary conditions for the operation of smart homes: home gateways, smart devices, networks, and control centers. Non-essential conditions: smart voice speakers (Tmall Genie, Xiaodu, etc.).

　　Home gateway (also called a host): The core device (equivalent to the brain) of the entire smart home system, which connects all devices together and can be controlled anytime and anywhere. With the gateway, various smart devices can be logically linked, so as to form an organic whole.

　　Smart devices: such as smart switch panels, smart sockets, universal remote controls, etc., are used to transform traditional household appliances and turn them into intelligent and controllable appliances.

　　Network (wired or WIFI): Smart devices need to be connected to the network before they can be intelligently controlled.

　　Control center: Users can centrally control the smart home through the control center. At present, the control center is mainly in the form of an APP.

　　If the user configures the voice speaker, he can achieve intelligent control by issuing instructions to the smart speaker.

　　Second, the core technology of smart speakers

　　1. Chip technology

　　Chips are the core of smart devices. At present, there are mainly MediaTek, Allwinner, Rockchip, UNISOC, Qualcomm, Amlogic, and other manufacturers that provide chip technology for smart speakers. In addition to the main control chip, there are also digital power amplifier chips, Audio ADC chips, memory chips, power system management chips, WIFI Bluetooth combo chips, etc.

　　2. Microphone array technology

　　This technology is hardware support for speech recognition. It mainly solves the problem of long-distance speech recognition and extraction of pure sound sources in complex acoustic environments while suppressing noise. When environmental noise, room reverberation, human voice superposition, model noise, array structure, etc. When there is a problem, the microphone array technology will play a role, and its development mainly presents miniaturization, low cost, and intelligence (recognizing multiple voices)

　　3. Voice recognition technology

　　The technology is in a relatively mature stage, and the general near-field recognition rate can reach more than 90%, and the recognition rate of some technologies can reach 97%.

　　4. Semantic recognition technology

　　It is not enough for smart speakers to recognize speech. The key is to recognize semantics and understand the meaning of users in order to provide a better interactive experience. The key to the development of semantic recognition technology is the collection of data volume and the construction of algorithmic models. When the amount of collected data is sufficient, more complex and accurate modeling can be constructed through algorithmic models, so as to correctly identify context and semantics. At present, this technology generally has shortcomings such as a high false awakening rate, unstable continuous dialogue function, and poor semantic understanding ability, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

　　5. Content recommendation algorithm

　　The intelligence of smart speakers is also reflected in the ability to recommend content according to user needs and improve user satisfaction.

 
                  Recommended reading:What is a smart home and what are the functions of a smart home?