Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, the investment arm of Motorola Solutions, has invested in Yokneam-based Israeli start-up VocalZoom, which develops sensors for speech enhancement. Details about the size of the investment and its terms were not disclosed.
Other VocalZoom investors in this series of funding include existing investors 3M and OurCrowd, as well as new investor FueTrek (Japan).
VocalZoom has developed an optoelectronic microphone able to substantially enhance a speaker’s voice over any background noise. The technology creates a “virtual cube” in space, sensing sound from only within the cube. This enables highly significant speech enhancement and precise speaker isolation, which are the key elements missing today to enable mass-usage of voice-driven applications for devices such as radios and smartphones.
Motorola Solutions believes VocalZoom’s technology can establish a new frontier in voice commands and sharing of intelligence with public safety personnel through devices, even in a noisy environment or in the heat of the moment with a perpetrator.
Motorola Solutions CTO Paul Steinberg said, “VocalZoom has the potential to be the difference of whether a firefighter can communicate at a dangerous fire scene or if a transportation or utility worker can give or receive information in a noisy work environment. For police officers, for example, turning their heads to communicate can be the difference between life and death for them or the people they are protecting, or the difference between whether a criminal is apprehended or escapes.”
VocalZoom chairman Yechiel Kurtz said, “VocalZoom’s optical microphone is the only technology of its kind that is not affected by any background noise, and has the potential to provide disruptive voice clarity in any condition."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 7, 2015
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2015