Voice Recognition is practically useless

[EVster]

I find that 90% of the time my RAV4EV's voice recognition cannot properly recognize the names I am saying from my iPhone's directory - mostly they are pretty simple names.
I have given up using it - trying to get these names right and cancelling out the wrong ones while trying to use the VR is more distracting than looking up my contacts on my phone!
(I am a native English speaker)
Is it just me, or do others find the voice recognition mostly useless?

 

[Incredulocious]

I find that 90% of the time my RAV4EV's voice recognition cannot properly recognize the names I am saying from my iPhone's directory - mostly they are pretty simple names.
I have given up using it - trying to get these names right and cancelling out the wrong ones while trying to use the VR is more distracting than looking up my contacts on my phone!
(I am a native English speaker)
Is it just me, or do others find the voice recognition mostly useless?

Use Siri instead... assuming your iPhone's been paired with your RAV4, hold down the iPhone's home button for a moment and you'll find that the Bluetooth connection will kick in over your music even if you're listening to the radio. You can then say your voice command (relayed by the RAV4's microphone) and let the iPhone interpret it, rather than the RAV4's voice recognition system. And of course you get much more than just phone contacts: navigation, music control, weather, messaging, generic questions... and knock knock jokes.

Only issue is that, if you're not already listening to your Bluetooth connection, it won't necessarily switch over fast enough to hear Siri's acknowledgement beep to tell you to begin speaking.

 

[fromport]

(I am a native English speaker)
Is it just me, or do others find the voice recognition mostly useless?

I am actually surprised how well it works.
But block all background noise, no open windows etc.

The thing I was surprised about:
If/when you say either "home" or "mobile" after someones name, it also chooses that from the phone book.
I used to just call someones name, would usually give me home, and if I wanted mobile, i had to say "other"
to get the next entry.
But it turns out that is not necessary.

I am using android phone (note 4) btw

 

[branstone]

i think it works great, just have to wait for the beep.

 

[n3ckf]

most of the time it works for me when i use it.

one aspect of voice recognition (especially non-state-of-the-art voice recognition like you get on later android and iphones) is that its very speaker-dependent.

my voice has *always* worked well for voice recognition systems (a startup i was involved in once license Nuance, which was/is one of the most common VR systems and a whole bunch of us on the dev team used the diagnostic tool that lets you see how "confident" the system is in the VR solution (ie. what word its picking for what you're saying). Turns out, it was almost 99% for me, almost all the time. Apparently, i have the near-perfect voice for VR. (at least with Nuance). People often say i have a "radio voice" (like a radio announcer). If you want to hear a really good example of a radio voice, Rush Limbaugh (before his hearing loss) and Art Bell both have it. (I've heard both in person as well as on the radio and the in-person voice is *even more distinctive* than the on-air voice, which is often compressed and processed in different ways).

One thing i notice is that certain names dont work (even for me). I think this might be because i have a lot of contacts and there might not be much solution space to differentiate them. Effectively what VR does is take what you're saying and compute the most probable answer. If there are a large # of possible answers that are close to each other, its going to pick the wrong one a lot. For me that comes in names that start with "Jo", like "John" "Joe" etc. It seems to make mistakes in that are a lot. "Joy" however (i have a friend named Joy) it gets right every time.

Modern VR systems (the ones developed by Google and Apple and in research) use a ton of processor power to pre-compute part of the VR solution (so your phone can do it for instance). This is a very active field of research, so the trick of using your android phone or Siri will keep getting "better" over time. The problem they're trying to solve is harder than the one toyota has though (they're trying to do free speech recognition of a large command set, whereas the Toyota thing only has a limited command set, which is easier).

Unlike real people who don't know your language, it does help to speak louder and more slowly i've found too.

 

[4min]

I connect my iPhone to USB cable every time I'm in the car, and use the "Hey Siri" command for completely touchless experience. It doesn't work perfectly yet, but at least I know it'll be improving over time unlike Rav4 system.

The only issue with this setup is iPhone has to be plugged in before the car starts, otherwise the HU will notice that iPod is not connected and I have to scroll through all audio sources and then start music on iPhone as well. Is there any way to fix the HU to wait until iPod is connected rather than auto-switching to the next source?

 

[ChrisMtn]

I work out of mine all day. Use it constantly zero problems. Works way better than the Ford Sync.

 

[TeCKis300]

The RAV4EV is really my wife's car so I drive it a handful of times each month on weekends.

I've used the voice nav thing in the past when the car was relatively new and it worked like a charm.

Just noticed this past weekend when trying to use it after not using it for a long time, was that it was practically useless! I also did notice that the drivetrain/motor noise seems louder recently?? Might be your issue as well? Is it much better at a stop?