Jordan O'BrienAmazon announced a new feature called ‘Echo Spatial Perception’ back in 2016. This feature finally meant that only the Echo speaker nearest the person saying the ‘Alexa’ command would respond. Unfortunately, those with a third-party Alexa-enabled speaker still faced the problem of a chorus of responses, that is until now. That’s because Amazon has made the Echo Spatial Perception feature available to the cloud, enabling all Alexa-enabled devices to take advantage of it.
The Echo Spatial Perception feature enables users to always receive responses from the device they’re closest to, meaning there’s no longer a need to be so quiet that the other devices in the house don’t hear the Alexa wake word. Its availability on third-party devices is a major advancement in the Alexa ecosystem, and means users aren’t forced to have an Echo speaker to receive some of the best features.
ESP is available immediately on all new and existing Alexa-enabled device, and there’s no need to update those devices either. What’s more, Amazon claims that ESP is now even more accurate thanks to the power of the cloud. That means Echo users will also receive some advantage from this latest change.
“Alexa continues to become increasingly integrated with people’s lives as she is enabled across more devices from a range of manufacturers,” says Priya Abani, director of Amazon Alexa.
“By automatically enabling all devices to take advantage of ESP, customers are given the best experience with Alexa across the growing number of devices and Alexa-enabled experiences.”
With Alexa now available on everything from smartphones to cars, fridges to smoke detectors, it’s never been more important to make ESP widely available.