In recent years, artificial intelligence has ushered in a climax, Alexa、Google Home、 Microsoft Xiaona and others have invested heavily, and Apple has not relaxed. Its HomePod will also be launched at the end of the year. Looking at China, many companies are still in their infancy. Baidu, as the leader of the domestic AI industry, has recently launched DuerOS, a conversational AI system.

Previously, the author also experienced the HTC U11 equipped with DuerOS. After some tests, I think it makes up for the lack of Google services in China. Compared with other so-called "smart" smart assistants, DuerOS can "understand" me better and is much more practical. At the Baidu AI developer conference, after Jing Kun, general manager of Baidu Dusecret Business Department, announced the opening of DuerOS enterprise development suite, we (official account: Love to play computer games ）It was not easy to entrust someone to "get" one from a company. It is said that they have applied for a long time. Let's quickly experience whether DuerOS has the legendary "intelligence".

appearance

Although this is a development kit, we might as well take a look at its appearance. However, it is an engineering machine after all, so it looks really "very engineering". However, from the overall design and material selection, we can still see the ingenuity and unique aesthetics of the engineers. The crystal clear overall appearance, the structural design with full sense of technology and the transparent intuitive impression are the plus points for its attraction to developers.  

The top is the control panel, which has six buttons, corresponding to the power on/off, restart, voice control, and volume up/down buttons. After being activated with the button, you can wake up through "small degree".

It can be seen that the body of the kit is made of acrylic plates, and users can see the components inside the body through transparent materials. Although it is only a development kit, it does not look simple, but has a unique and transparent aesthetic feeling inside.

It has a very simple appearance design. There are power interface, headphone hole and two microUSB interfaces on the top, and the speaker is at the bottom of the body. The top light ring can display the volume, voice control status and other information, followed by the switch on/off, restart, voice control and volume up/down keys.

In addition, the overall body is also very small and light. One hand carrying does not require any pressure, nor does it occupy space. More importantly, the hollow design in the middle makes it easy to grasp with your fingers.

In a word, from a "technical layman"'s point of view, conforming to the developer's tangible and visible usage habits, and having both aesthetic feeling and practicality, is one of the highlights of this development kit.

Intelligent interaction properties

In the field of intelligent voice interaction, whether a hardware product can realize hearing, understanding and meet consumer needs is one of the most important criteria to evaluate its intelligent interaction attributes. Next, we will test the intelligence of DuerOS, an enterprise development suite, from these three aspects.

1、 Listen clearly

1. Distribution network

To make DuerOS "speak", you need to connect to the network first. DuerOS uses WiFi distribution network mode. After connecting to the power supply, the blue light on the top of the phone will light up. After 30 seconds, the yellow light will light up. At this time, open the "Small Home" app on the phone, bind it to the DuerOS development kit, enter the WiFi password for it, and then you can start normal use. There is no difficulty in getting started. It is more convenient than many machines I have used before, It only takes about 10 seconds to connect to the Internet. The whole WiFi distribution network experience is convenient and fast.

（ The distribution network can be started when the yellow light is on ）

2. Voice wake-up

The wake-up word of DuerOS is "small and small". From the actual measurement, even in some noisy places, DuerOS can be easily activated through keywords.

Now let's test its activation distance. There is no problem using keywords to wake up at a normal distance (about 30cm between people and equipment); It's OK to wake up at a distance (about 1m between people and equipment); The operation farther away (about 2m between people and equipment) can also wake up normally, BTW： At this time, the ambient noise is low. If the noise is high, there may be 1-2 wake-up failures (at a long distance). We also tried the wake-up effect at a distance of 3 meters and 5 meters. There is no obstacle at 3.5 meters, and you can wake up at a distance of 5 meters, but the wake-up rate has decreased.

3、 APP

In the App of "Small Home", we can also make some personalized adjustments to the device settings, such as changing the voice of DuerOS: there are female voices, ordinary male voices, special male voices (it seems that they are not very special, but rather magnetic voices), emotional male voices (when speaking, there is a sense of yin and yang faltering, it is really emotional:- D) And children's voices.

In addition, you can see the conversation between the user and DuerOS in the App in case you don't hear it clearly. By the way, you can also access audio book content and then play it on DuerOS devices. Although the App does not have many functions, the overall experience of "small home" is personalized+streamlined.

DuerOS has a fast response speed. We conduct multi scenario and multi scenario tests with four types of questions: movie recommendation, playing music, asking weather and calculation questions. Basically, DuerOS has a very fast response speed from asking to answering for different items, and the whole process of interaction is also very smooth. Of course, the response speed value is not absolute, because it has a lot to do with the speed of the connected network to a certain extent.

2、 Understand

1. Semantic understanding

It can be seen that DuerOS has a good understanding of the language. Basically, what I said can be correctly identified. On the whole, I am satisfied with this. In fact, I have already experienced it in the previous small assistant experience.

2. Multi round dialogue

Unlike many intelligent assistants, DuerOS can also realize multiple rounds of dialogue, which can be used to answer users' questions. Here the author tried: "How far is the earth from the moon?" It can accurately answer "389802 kilometers", then I asked it "What is the distance from Mars?" Soon, it told me "55 to 400 million kilometers".

For me, only in this way can an intelligent assistant be intelligent.

3、 Satisfied

Functional experience

DuerOS has a lot of skills. According to the official introduction, DuerOS has 10 categories and more than 100 original skills, including: audio-visual entertainment, information query, chat and leisure, life services, smart home, travel conditions, practical tools, mobile phone instructions, personal assistants, knowledge education, etc. Now let's experience it.

Weather category: "What's the weather like tomorrow in Shenzhen?", "Do you need to bring an umbrella tomorrow?", "Is there rain tomorrow?" For all kinds of questions, the machine can quickly understand that you are asking about the weather and respond quickly, receive voice commands and then reply, "It will turn from moderate rain to thunderstorm tomorrow in Shenzhen, 26 ℃ to 31 ℃, and the air quality is excellent. It is best to take rain gear when traveling."

Film and television: "Small and small, what films are showing now?" "Now there are Dunkirk, Yinhun live version, interstellar agent, seaside Manchester and other films", the answer is quick and accurate. If you are bored at home, you can chat with it. The author tried to ask it: "Recommend a good American TV show to me". Then DuerOS suggested that I watch "Game of Power, Jessica Jones, Big Bang of Life, Suspect Tracking". Well, the quality of these American TV shows is really Nice (although I have seen them all), which is a recommendation of conscience.

Practical: DuerOS also has many uses for students. You can ask the meaning of some English words and even do calculation questions. For example, the author asks it: "What is the English of mechanical keyboard?", “Mechanical Keyboard”， Or: "How much is 773 times 635?", similarly, you can quickly tell "490855". In addition, it can also help you quickly convert the exchange rate. After actual measurement, the US dollar, British pound, Hong Kong dollar, etc. can be perfectly converted. It is much more convenient than opening an app on the Internet or mobile phones, without the need for hands and mouth. There are many other skills like this. Do you want to set an alarm clock? No problem. Just say, "Be modest, and wake me up at 1 am tomorrow"; Want to listen to music? Just say "play music in a small way"; Want to know the number of McDonald's reservation hotline? Ask directly, and it can answer your questions.

News: "What's the big news today?" Then DuerOS will play some real-time news for you. It's very convenient. You don't have to hold that small screen and stare at it all day long.

Joking: Since it is an intelligent assistant, it is also OK to tease her. For example, DuerOS can tell you a joke or talk to her about "I'm sad". His answers sometimes make you laugh or cry, and sometimes make you laugh.

From the current test results, DuerOS is a fully functional voice assistant, and it is easy to wake up, has a high recognition rate, and has a high accuracy rate of answering questions. Moreover, it does not pick a pose, and you don't need to think about how to say it, just say it directly. Unlike some intelligent assistants, users must follow the instructions before the assistant can recognize what the problem is.

Speaker Properties

Since many speakers will use this DuerOS development kit, let's experience its sound quality.

First of all, its voice is loud enough. If you turn the volume to the maximum, you can hear it clearly no matter where you put it at home (unless your home is a villa). Here, the author selects several pieces of music with different styles to test their bass, midrange, and treble effects, which have a more relaxed rural style, heavy metal disco, rock and roll, and so on.

Seen from the sense of hearing, its performance is fair, its voice is excellent, but it lacks some bass. After all, it is not a stacking device, which can meet the common needs of ordinary users. It is good to listen to music and e-books occasionally.

Summary

In general, this DuerOS Enterprise Development Kit is very convenient to use and has no difficulty in getting started. It can be seen that when used with the Xiaodu Home App, many functions can be achieved, both software and hardware are the same. It is worth the effort of the author to get this kit.

As can be seen from its official website, DuerOS now has many hardware manufacturers to carry out in-depth cooperation with it: including HTC vivo、 Xiaomi, Haier, Hisense, Midea, Lenovo, TCL, etc., believe that many hardware devices will be embedded with DuerOS in the future to provide more intelligent services.

At the press conference, the author also learned that hardware manufacturers and DuerOS can be easily used together. A few lines of code can transform the Anker speaker originally equipped with Alxea into a smart speaker with DuerOS. Whether developers or ordinary users, I believe this is a great convenience.

Based on easy to use+rich content+smart enough, more partners should join DuerOS in the future.

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