In the smart home, everything speaks. Literally. Voice assistants have now become familiar aspects even for less-experienced users, and as a consequence, brands from a whole range of sectors are adding them to unlikely products such as mirrors or showers. Even a toilet. This increasingly rapid spread is down to two factors. On the one hand we have the advances made in Natural Language Processing (NLP), the technology which has allowed machines to understand natural speech. Now they can interpret requests made in the most varied of ways, without users having to learn tricky pre-imposed commands. On the other, Google and Amazon have made their systems, Alexa and Assistant, open to developers, allowing them to add them to their creations. To give an idea of the scale, Alexa is currently in 28 thousand devices compared to the 4 thousand one year ago.
Voice assistants are moving on from smartphones and speakers and are now invading the whole house. The most curious example is the Numi Smart Toilet by Kohler, a connected toilet which, from a starting price of 8 thousand dollars, offers experiences which have never been seen before. Obviously, we can personalise seat temperature as well as the strength of the water and air jets, but it also has integrated speakers and multicoloured lights. All of this can be activated by voice commands, as it is equipped with Amazon's Alexa.
The mirror could certainly not be left out of all this, and in fact Kohler has also launched the Verdera Loice Lighted Mirror, which uses Alexa - with Google Assistant soon to follow - to allow us to voice-command the lighting as well as other connected devices such as the shower. Even this has become smart, with the DTV+ Shower System. We can ask it to activate the morning or evening shower, from example, and the assistant will adjust the temperature of its seven water jets according to our preferences, just like in a spa. Another smart shower is the U by Moen. Compatible with Alexa, Assistant or Siri, it allows users to activate or stop the water jets via vocal commands as well as adjusting the temperature simply by asking for the preferred number of degrees.Non poteva certo mancare lo specchio e Kohler ha lanciato anche il Verdera Voice Lighted Mirror sfrutta Alexa e presto anche Google Assistant possiamo regolare l'illuminazione a voce ma anche controllare gli altri dispositivi connessi come la doccia. Anch'essa diventa smart con la DTV+ Shower System. Possiamo chiedere di attivare la doccia mattutina o serale, per esempio, e l'assistente regolerà la temperatura dei suoi sette getti d'acqua secondo le nostre preferenze. Come in una spa. Altra doccia smart è la U by Moen: compatibile con Alexa, Assistant e Siri, permette di attivare o fermare il getto d'acqua a voce oltre che regolare la temperatura chiedendo semplicemente i gradi preferiti.
Less complex is the Sensor Mirror by Simplehuman, which has Google Assistant integrated and furthermore, thanks to a sensor, adjusts brightness automatically allowing us to see how our face will look in sunlight or in other environments, or adjust the light to help us sleep better. In order to wake up at our best, there is the Reverie smart bed, an intelligent bed which wakes us up at the right time. And so our smart day can finally start again.