In 2014, Amazon officially launched Amazon Echo smart speakers equipped with Alexa intelligent voice assistant. Nobody expected that this little thing would occupy 25% of the total speaker market in 2015. Subsequently, in the context of the gradual expansion of the smart home market, smart speakers with central control system and voice assistant have attracted much attention. Google also brought their smart speakers - Google Home at the I/O developer conference in 2016. In contrast, most speakers in China are still a long way from the intelligent stage. Most of them use simple voice assistants and cannot be used as the central control system of smart homes. At the beginning of 2017, a domestic smart speaker named "Ruoqi Yueshi" won two CES 2017 awards (Audio and Video Innovation Product Award, Science and Technology Change Life Award). As one of the few smart speakers in China with intelligent voice assistant and smart home central control, how could Ruoqi Yueshi (English: Rokid Pebble) stand out in CES 2017? I hope you can find the answer in this evaluation.

parameter

In terms of parameter configuration, Ruoji Moonstone adopts multi-core processor, 2GB RAM+16GB ROM, Android 6.0 system, 2.4G/5G WiFi, Bluetooth wireless protocol, Chinese and English voice modes, and has been adapted to Xiaomi, Ouruibo lifesmart、 Smart home equipment of brands such as Bolian and Philips Hue. Unlike other smart devices, smart speakers do not focus on how strong their performance is. Platform compatibility and voice interaction experience are the key to the success of a smart speaker.

appearance

The outer package of Ruoji Moonstone is a cube. After opening the package, you can see a Ruoji Moonstone body, a quick start guide, a USB Type-C data cable, and an original charging head.

The Ruoji Moonstone can be divided into three layers by materials. The upper layer is a curved metal shell made of high-strength aviation aluminum oxide. The top center of the metal shell is sunken downward and equipped with keys; The transparent belt in the middle can give out light, which acts as an indicator light; The lower layer is a precise speaker mesh structure, which is also the opening position of the speaker. There is a sunken structure in the lower layer, which is a USB Type-C interface.

Ruoji Moonstone's creative design inspiration comes from the Chicago landmark The Bean, which is a masterpiece of nature and also symbolizes the power of nature. The high-strength aviation aluminum oxide material on the upper layer of Ruoji Moonstone has been pressed and shaped for many times, and polished with diamond grinding fluid, making its surface very smooth, like a flowing metal. It is seamlessly combined with the speaker grid at the bottom through the transparent belt in the middle. It seems that the three are integrated.

The button is located on the top of Ruoji Moonstone. In addition to voice control, users can also use the button to perform some simple operations on it, such as increasing or decreasing the volume, prohibiting pickup, and so on.

The pebble shaped Ruoji Moonstone, as its name suggests, is like a stone. The design of aluminum alloy makes it rich in science and technology, just like the combination of nature and technology. Due to the particularity of the design, Ruoji Moonstone has a strong scene coordination, which makes it very harmonious and natural whether it is placed in a Japanese style house or a European and American style house with grand decoration.

Practical experience

The use of Ruoji Moonstone is very simple. According to the attached guide, we first download and install the Rokid App on the mobile phone, click the power button of Ruoji Moonstone, and after Ruoji Moonstone enters the orange light state, carry out Bluetooth connection and WiFi pairing on the mobile phone. After that, we can start to officially use Ruoji Moonstone.

Each time the user's voice command will be converted into text and displayed in the dialog box with Ruoji

According to the types of functions, Ruoji Moonstone covers four aspects: intelligent music playing, intelligent voice assistant, children's accompanying, and controlling smart home.

Intelligent music playing

Smart music playing demonstration video

The first is the music playing function of Ruoji Moonstone. Ruoji Moonstone has 6 million pieces of 320k high sampling rate music in its music library, and we can let Ruoji play music directly through voice. In the demonstration video, the author asked Ruoji to randomly order music. After a short period of 2-3 seconds, Ruoji began to randomly play the music in the music library. In addition, Ruoji Yueshi can still control the voice when playing music. In the demonstration video, the author asked Ruoji Yueshi, who is playing music, to switch the track to Xue Zhiqian's "Actor". Under the background sound of music, it can still accurately and quickly recognize the author's voice and make correct feedback instructions to start playing the "Actor" 。

Although Ruoji Moonstone's own positioning is a high-quality speaker equipment, its sound quality is not disappointing. The 2x32mm full frequency speaker gives it a full sense of low frequency, but it can also be improved when diving. The middle and high frequency parts perform well, which is generally suitable for listening to music.

Intelligent Voice Assistant

Smart Voice Assistant Function Demonstration-1

Smart Voice Assistant Function Demonstration-2

The intelligent voice assistant can be said to be Ruoji Moonstone's specialty. We can talk with Ruoji Moonstone through voice. For example, when you say "Ruoji, I'm going to sleep", it will reply "I won't disturb you" and then enter standby mode;

If you say to it, "Ruoji, I'm back", it will reply, "Are you back? Are you tired? Help you relax". At this time, if you answer, "tired, help me relax", Ruoji Moonstone will play some soothing light music. If you return to "no use", then Qi Yueshi will not give any instructions. This is the unique "continuous instruction" function of Ruoji Moonstone, which can make semantic understanding and feedback in combination with the context. At present, the vast majority of smart speakers on the market are unable to achieve "continuous instructions", and remain in the form of a single command of one question and one answer. Ruoji Moonstone supports news, weather broadcast, alarm clock, memo and other functions.

If Qi Yueshi's intelligence lies in that if the user only says "broadcast news", if Qi Yueshi will answer "what type of news do you need to broadcast, including technology, entertainment...", it will recognize your voice commands and let you give more detailed choices, which is a process of human-computer interaction. In the demonstration video, the author asked Ruoji Yueshi to broadcast scientific and technological news. Due to time constraints, the author is not sure how long his news can be broadcast. However, in actual use, Ruoji Yueshi's news broadcast time can last more than 10 minutes, and the broadcast news content will not repeat and similar situations, reflecting its intelligence.

Children's company

Demonstration of children's accompanying function

  Although Ruoji Yueshi is not a child rearing robot, Ruoji Yueshi's voice assistant has rich teaching materials for children, including fairy tales, nursery rhymes, Tang poems, Song lyrics and other audiobooks for school-age children, and also supports the function of voice translation. In the demonstration video, the author said "tell a story" to Ruoji Yueshi, who will randomly play fairy tales and idiom stories. Of course, users can also choose to play stories with the specified name. This link is somewhat similar to playing music. In addition, we can also translate it from Chinese to English at any time, and the process of translation is also shown in the video.

Control smart home

Ruoji Moonstone has supported many smart home platforms at home and abroad, including but not limited to Mijia, Ouruibo Lifemart、 Bolian, Philips Hue, etc. We can find the entrance of smart home in Rokid App and select the corresponding smart home platform for access. In the experience, the author used a smart plug of Lifemart, logged in the Lifemart account in Rokid App, and then linked the smart plug of Lifemart to the management of Ruoji Moonstone.

After associating the products, we can find the corresponding products in the smart home list. After clicking in, we can see that Ruoji Yueshi has set the voice control part: "open the socket", "open the socket", "close the socket", "close the socket" and other commands. At this time, we only need to say these instructions to Ruoji Yueshi to control the Lifemart socket. In the actual experience, even if what we say is not the same voice command as the one built in Ruoji Moonstone, it can be correctly recognized, such as "Ruoji, help me open the socket", "Open the socket", "Open the socket now", and so on.

summary

Although Google Home and Amazon Echo are beautiful, they are not suitable for socialism with characteristics and the national conditions of our country. They do not support Chinese and domestic smart home platforms, and the domestic network will also make them have a very unpleasant user experience in use. Ruoji Moonstone can be said to be a domestic version of Echo. On the premise of ensuring functional integrity, it can be compatible with domestic mainstream smart home platforms, and is also equipped with localized services such as children's education, Chinese English translation, domestic news, and so on. In terms of the consumption habits of domestic users, we often require products to have more abundant use scenarios. Ruoji Yueshi is not only a smart speaker, but also a parenting robot and smart home central controller. One product has three roles. Since almost none of these smart speakers are equipped with a screen, the intelligent voice assistant has become the key to the product experience. Although Ruoji Yueshi's own Ruoji voice assistant cannot achieve 100% speech recognition rate, its speech recognition rate still maintains a high level, and it can also successfully recognize Mandarin with dialect accent. Speaking of disadvantages, if Qi Moonstone has its own battery, but its measured endurance cannot last for a day, it can last about 5 hours if it plays music all the time. However, it is more convenient to connect it to the power supply for a long time in the specific use process.