ADT’s Pulse® Voice App Brings Voice Biometrics into the Home Security and Automation Mix

By Dan Miller on July 11, 2014 • ( 2 )

In its effort to maintain leadership in the home monitoring and security field, ADT has taken a giant step by offering highly secure home automation services as well. The newly launched ADT Pulse® Voice App features two-factor user authentication that seamlessly combines voice biometrics with a customer-selected passphrase to provide highly-secure, smartphone-based control of a home’s security system as well as other “smart home” functions, including lighting systems, home entertainment units, garage doors and even door locks.

It’s all illustrated in this video:

To be clear, this is not a conversational intelligent assistant. Instead it is a voice-based interface to the mobile app that ADT introduced in 2010 to make it more convenient for home-owners to check the status and take control of their home security units, as well as the myriad of other functions that ADT anticipates competing smart home technology providers (be it Google, Honeywell, Microsoft, Comcast, GE or any of the variety of companies vying for a share of this emerging industry).

Lo and behold, it takes a security-oriented company like ADT to bring voice biometrics into the mix by enabling users to initiate the service by speaking the passphrase of their choice. ADT also placed a premium on the smartphone’s ability to carry out its assigned tasks quickly and without relying on resources in the cloud. For that reason, both the automated speech recognition and the voice biometric authentication resources rely on “embedded” resources – no “cloud” necessary.

ADT Pulse made its debut in 2010 to give smartphone owners a convenient way to control their home security and automation systems. ADT Pulse Voice was demonstrated at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January and was featured in a “soft roll-out,” making it available to protected home owners in the U.S. and Canada.

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Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Intelligent Authentication, Articles