Nuance Communications is looking to extend voice communications beyond the car to companion Internet of Things devices with the beta release of Nuance Mix, its voice and natural language developer platform.

The company – whose Dragon Drive connected car platform is already used by vehicle manufacturers including Ford, BMW, Toyota and Daimler – believes that automakers and Tier-1 suppliers also need the ability to quickly and easily customise a consistent voice experience on companion apps running on smart devices that connect to the car.

Nuance Mix promises developers the control and flexibility necessary to extend natural language, voice recognition and text-to-speech capabilities to wearables and consumer electronics. the company said.

Furthermore, both Dragon Drive and Nuance Mix are both platform agnostic, providing the freedom to develop and deploy these voice interfaces in a wide variety of systems.

“Nuance is uniquely positioned to bring intelligent voice experiences to the connections that exist between cars and devices like wearables and smart home products,” said Chris Schreiner, director of in-vehicle user experience, strategy analytics.

“For automakers, the combination of Nuance Dragon Drive and Nuance Mix allows them to seamlessly expand the in-car experience to the connected ecosystem through the most intuitive user interface – the human voice.”