There seems to be a lot of commentary on the Voice Recognition system in the LS460, so I thought a poll might be in order.

Please think about your experience with the VR system in your LS460 and tell us what percentage of the time you find it to be accurate. ("Accurate" meaning that the system understands your command and performs the function you ask it to.)

 

i say 50/50. but then i pretty much don't use it at all

 

I would say accuracy of 40% at best. I also don't use it very much. It could it be my accent (southern drawl).

 

By the way, this is of special interest in view of the Nav in-motion lockout discussions elsewhere on the forum.

Many people defend the lockout by saying, "What's the problem? You can always use the voice commands." But if the VR system sucks, that's not a good option. (Not to mention the limited use you get from VR.)

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My guess is if people say that the system usually or never understands their commands, they are simply saying that because they want the lock out removed by Lexus. In a few cases it may be due to speech impediments, which is a legitmate gripe. The only way around that would be to have a system that "learned" that individual's speech patterns. This software does exist and certainly could be adapted by Lexus, at a cost of course.

 

I voted 75% (most of the time). I've had good experience with the voice recognition.

 

Over the last few months I've learned that the wind noise I hear is from either my super sensitive hearing or some inner ear problem. Yesterday I learned that the preceived fun I have driving my car is really advanced Alzheimers. And today I learned that my car not understanding me is a result of my own speech impediment.

At least I've saved lots of money by not having to visit my doctor.

 

Wow - with 15 of you weighing in, 2/3 are saying the VR system falls in the 25-50% range. That's not too impressive.

Maybe the numbers will improve as more people vote.

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Interesting. At 21 votes, it's a dead tie among the 3 categories of 25%, 50% and 75%, with 18 or you falling in that corridor.

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With 26 votes now in, we're making a very nice bell curve, centered on the 50% ranking.

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sit gerk bedy wel.

 

Tried it a few times, but quickly lost interest due to chronic repetition. I found I had to slow down, articulate and raise the tone of my voice, something I do with restless children, so why should I bother when hitting the appropriate switch achieve faster results? I wish children had "appropriate" switches...

 

I have to agree with Burnaby.....

I like the children switch....lol

 

After living with it for a couple of months, I've discovered it works a lot better in Nav mode than in, say, climate control mode.

To be more specific, I've had really good luck entering destination addresses and asking for nearby POI's, but there are other functions where it just has a hearing problem. I tried to get it to change the temperature to 70 degrees last week, and it insisted on setting it to 78 degrees every time. I tried it seven times in a row, enunciating it clearly and using different intonations, volume levels, everything I could think of. It flatly refused to set it to 70.

That really puzzles me, because "seventy-eight degrees" has a whole extra syllable in it as compared to "seventy degrees". So, how it got 78 out of 70 I'll never know. I tried it later to show my wife, and the SOB nailed it the first time. Go figger.

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The normal Lexus voice recognition system is grossly inferior to any other car I've tried (ie. BMW, Mercedes).

HOWEVER, the voicetag used when dialing via the Lexus Link personal phoning has been 100% accurate.

From a software viewpoint, this makes absolute sense, since with a voice tag, the software is comparing what you've said to what you said when you recorded the voice tag, a much easier task than comparing what you've just said to ANY possible command. Also, variations such as accents are automatically resolved.

Having said that, there's no reason why the Lexus voice recognition system can't be as good as other manufacturers, other than motivation. It must be very low on the Lexus list of things that need to be fixed.

HBH