A Platform for Offline Voice Assistants: Development of Assistant Applications Without Being Connected to Commercial Central Services

Abstract

Smart speakers provide a convenient way to request information or control the smart home. Commercial devices require central services operated by large companies. As a result, many users are concerned about privacy and security. A solution could be to shift all involved software components to the end-user device. Even though we then cannot access the large variety of functions of commercial smart speakers, they often are sufficient for common applications such as weather forecast, public transportation timetables or to control smart home devices. Even though existing voice interaction platforms already provide basic functions such as wake word detection and speech recognition, a developer still has to put huge efforts to create smart speaker applications. In this paper we present the JabberBrick platform that significantly simplifies such developments.