For years Nuance's Dragon served as a leader in the world of voice dictation and commands. More recently, though, as Google and Apple move in on the speech control world, the company has a more pressing need than ever to distinguish itself. Enter Dragon Mobile Assistant. This app aims to "expands the natural language understanding and artificial intelligence" of Dragon Go! and "[add] the most popular personal assistant features."

At this point, most of our readers are probably aware of how voice assistants work. This one isn't much different from the usual fare. You can speak commands to set up appointments, make calls, send texts, and perform searches. One distinguishing feature is that once you've entered a search request, you can slide a bar to the left and right to run it through a variety of services including Google, Wikipedia, eBay, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube and more. It's not quite the intelligent queries we've been spoiled by lately, but it's certainly flexible.

There is also a driver mode that allows the app to listen passively for commands and read messages aloud to you so you can listen and respond without taking your eyes off the road. Though, to be perfectly honest, that passive-listening feature sounds nice outside the car. Hey Google, you think we could get some of that?

Nuance Reveals Dragon Mobile Assistant

Immediately Downloadable in Beta for Android, Dragon Delivers Elegant, Intelligent Mobile Assistant Experience

Burlington, Mass. – October 24, 2012 – Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced the beta availability of Dragon Mobile Assistant for Android. Dragon expands the natural language understanding and artificial intelligence capabilities first showcased as part of the successful Dragon Go! application. The Dragon Mobile Assistant sends texts, makes calls, sets appointments, and delivers direct access to open content on the mobile web from more than 200 content providers.

“Consumers loved the original Dragon Go! and wanted even more”, said Michael Thompson, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile, “So we totally redesigned the experience in a conversational way and added the most popular personal assistant features.”

For example, people can say:

· “Tell Natalie, ‘I’m on the way to the office and will grab you a Starbucks’”

· “Schedule a meeting for 2 p.m. tomorrow with John Smith”

· “Get directions to the New England Aquarium”

· “How’s the weather look this week?”

· “Send out a new Tweet, I can’t believe that finish to the game!”

Dragon also offers a hands-free personal assistant experience. Simply wake up Dragon by saying “Hi Dragon.” Or, listen to inbound text messages in Driver Mode.

“Nuance is investing deeply in Natural Language Understanding and conversational dialog technologies”, said Vlad Sejnoha, chief technology officer, Nuance, “We will continue to add new innovations to the Dragon Mobile Assistant to explore what’s possible, and to push the limits of intelligent voice interfaces across all mobile form factors, including phones, tablets, PCs, cars, and televisions.”

Availability

Dragon is available in beta for free in English on Google Play in the US, supporting Android Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and above, with expanded availability and new features planned before the end of 2012. To download Dragon, visit https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nuance.balerion.

Dragon Mobile Assistant joins Dragon Dictation, Dragon Go!, Dragon Drive!, Dragon TV, Dragon ID, Dragon Voicemail to Text, and Swype as part of Nuance’s portfolio of voice, touch and natural language understanding innovations that are defining a new generation of personal assistant technologies. To learn more, visitwww.dragonmobileapps.com, or join the conversation atwww.facebook.com/dragonmobileapps or @DragonMobileApp on Twitter.