Vuzix Enters into a Relationship with Vivoka to Provide Industry-Leading Voice Recognition Language Support for Vuzix M-Series Smart Glasses

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vuzix® Corporation (NASDAQ: VUZI), ("Vuzix" or, the "Company"), a leading supplier of Smart Glasses and Augmented Reality (AR) technology and products, continues to steadily expand both the utility and functionality of its M-Series Smart Glasses. Most notably, Vuzix M400 and M4000 Smart Glasses are now capable of expanding support to up to 30 languages, which exceeds the breadth of enablement for language support of any competing AR/smart glasses product in the market. Vuzix has worked closely with Vivoka, a French company with expertise in the field of speech technologies, to provide this level of language support via Vivoka's edge voice technologies.

Vuzix has released three major software updates for its M-Series Smart Glasses thus far in 2021. The latest, version 2.3.0, updates the built-in speech command recognition engine to use the latest technology available from Vivoka. This update adds the Cantonese dialect, improves speech detection accuracy in certain environments, and better handles accents. The improved voice engine represents a strategic update that will allow Vuzix to better support broader global deployments of its products. Other new or updated features in 2.3.0 include broader Wi-Fi frequency support, improvements to the Wi-Fi roaming behavior for certain enterprise configurations, allowing location data to be received from the companion application on a linked smart phone, and automatic setting of the time zone upon network connection. Separately, Vuzix has enhanced its Video Streamer App, which now allows M-Series Smart Glasses users to publish live video feeds directly to popular sites such as YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook Live. The combination of the glasses' 4K video resolution camera and powerful Qualcomm XR1 platform easily captures and processes video up to the highest Smart Glasses resolution on the market.

Vuzix Smart Glasses take a step ahead in human-machine interactions by bringing in the offline and multilingual Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) provided by Vivoka's Voice Development Kit. The Voice Development Kit is the result of several years of expertise in the field of voice. Gathering all the embedded speech technologies, both proprietary and licensed-in, that companies and developers would need, the solution offers cutting-edge access to the voice ecosystem. It is equipped with a user-friendly graphical interface that facilitates the choice, development and testing of multiple technologies, from automatic speech processing and wake words, to voice biometrics and text-to-speech.

"At Vivoka, we all imagine a world where voice is the most natural way to interact with our surrounding technologies. With clients such as Vuzix, we are very proud to participate in a revolution that is carried by powerful innovation players. Wearables like Vuzix' famous smart glasses will bring even more thrust in the voice tech mass adoption by companies. Our goal is more than ever to provide developers with state-of-the-art technologies that are easy to adopt and to turn into real inventions," said William Simonin, Vivoka CEO and Co-Founder.

"The broad language support capability of our products is a distinct competitive advantage for us across many foreign markets and we are happy to be working with a speech technology leader such as Vivoka to enable this. Moreover, many areas equipped with Vuzix Smart Glasses are affected by specific environments that make it difficult to have perfect connectivity for Cloud solutions and Vivoka's solutions can run offline, on-device, to operate anywhere, anytime," said Paul Travers, President and CEO of Vuzix. "We continue to bring additional functionalities and feature enhancements to our Smart Glasses, many based on the ongoing customer feedback we receive, as we leverage the power and performance of our robust hardware platform."

About Vivoka

Vivoka is a French company located in Metz and founded in 2015 by William Simonin. Thanks to its innovative solutions, Vivoka has become the French leader in voice recognition with the Voice Development Kit. It allows any company and developer to configure an embedded voice assistant composed of one or more offline voice technologies in record time. Vivoka won the coveted Innovation Award at CES 2019. A feat it repeated by winning the Innovation Award in the Smart Cities category at CES 2020. Accompanied by a dynamic team of about 30 employees, Vivoka has managed to double the number of its customers this past year.

About Vuzix Corporation

Vuzix is a leading supplier of Smart Glasses and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and products for the consumer and enterprise markets. The Company's products include personal display and wearable computing devices that offer users a portable high-quality viewing experience, provide solutions for mobility, wearable displays and augmented reality. Vuzix holds 210 patents and patents pending and numerous IP licenses in the Video Eyewear field. The Company has won Consumer Electronics Show (or CES) awards for innovation for the years 2005 to 2021 and several wireless technology innovation awards among others. Founded in 1997, Vuzix is a public company (NASDAQ: VUZI) with offices in Rochester, NY, Oxford, UK, and Tokyo, Japan.  For more information, visit the Vuzix website,  Twitter and Facebook pages.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer

Certain statements contained in this news release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward looking statements contained in this release relate to Vuzix Smart Glasses, our business relationship with Vivoka, the capabilities and uses of their software and among other things the Company's leadership in the Smart Glasses and AR display industry. They are generally identified by words such as "believes," "may," "expects," "anticipates," "should" and similar expressions. Readers should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are based upon the Company's beliefs and assumptions as of the date of this release. The Company's actual results could differ materially due to risk factors and other items described in more detail in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Reports and MD&A filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and applicable Canadian securities regulators (copies of which may be obtained at www.sedar.com or www.sec.gov). Subsequent events and developments may cause these forward-looking statements to change. The Company specifically disclaims any obligation or intention to update or revise these forward-looking statements as a result of changed events or circumstances that occur after the date of this release, except as required by applicable law.

Vivoka Contact:

Laurent Scherchel, Communication & PR Manager - Vivoka
Mail : [email protected]

Vuzix Media and Investor Relations Contact:

Ed McGregor, Director of Investor Relations,
Vuzix Corporation
[email protected] 
Tel: (585) 359-5985

Vuzix Corporation, 25 Hendrix Road, West Henrietta, NY 14586 USA,
Investor Information – [email protected]  www.vuzix.com

SOURCE Vuzix Corporation

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