Sogou Maps, a popular Chinese mapping service application developed by Beijing Sogou Technology Development Co., Ltd, on Tuesday launched an "intelligent co-driver" system, allowing voice interaction during car journeys and liberating drivers' eyes and hands.

"Data shows that the accident rate of drunk driving is 12 times of normal driving, with drug driving 21 times. However, the rate goes to 23 times when drivers are watching their mobile phones," said Kong Xiang, general manager of Sogou Maps, highlighting the value of integrating voice technology into mapping products for a better and safer driving process.

The logo of Sogou company. /VCG Photo

The new system embedded in Sogou Maps is able to support conversations in various scenarios inside the vehicle, including searching for a destination, starting navigation, setting intermediate stops, and inquiring about road conditions -- all by voice commands.

For instance, when the user instructs "I am going to the Olympic Forest Park," the system will ask: "Are you going to the north campus of the park or the south?" Once the destination is determined, it will map out a proper route with the distance and estimated arrival time.

Sogou Maps has made a breakthrough in the mapping industry by realizing multi-round voice interaction during the entire journey, said Kong, thanks to the company's comprehensive technical capacities, including voice recognition, semantic interpretation, intelligent error-correction, intelligent search and intention analysis.

A screenshot of Sogou Maps. /VCG Photo

The daily volume of voice requests has reached an average of 240 million times, which helps the company accumulate a mass of speech corpus data, especially in noisy environments and with differing accents.

So far, Sogou Maps has reached 97 percent accuracy in voice recognition. The new system also provides cloud services and customized voice-assistant services for vehicle manufacturers.

Sogou Maps is cooperating with several automobile enterprises, and new models powered by navigation products of Sogou Maps will soon be on market.