Voice recognition failure

[black-on-black]

It seems no matter what I do the voice recognition does not recognise my voice. The funny thing is in an is250 f sport it was a lot better I recognise my voice. I was told by one Lexus dealer it's my accent. 🤨 I told him "What do I do to speak Japanese to it?"

https://youtube.com/shorts/y78Mnncphfc?feature=share

[Brian R]

Try this, it might work: 家に電話します

pronounced

Ie ni denwa shimasu

But seriously, it does seem an odd one. Curiously, I never had to train my voice, but the car recognises every word. I can only think you must have a recycled voice command out of my Insignia from 2009, now that was unbelievably hopeless.

Hope you get it resolved, but out of interest have any others tried speaking into it, and what were their outcomes?

[black-on-black]

あなたはとても面白いです、そしてあなたは立ち上がるべきです😀

It's not just that sometimes on phone calls things go wrong. I'm going to go with the assumption it's a faulty microphone.

[PDM]

Robert,

What year and model of vehicle is this?An RX450h?  Which model year?

It could well be a microphone problem.

On Lexus Tech there is a procedure for diagnosing voice recognition faults. Can you point your dealer to that?

Paul

[Goodplan53]

My wife and I have also been unable to use the voice recognition function on our 66 plate RX 450h. We’ve given up trying to train the system.  Yet another disappointment in the litany of infotainment failings with this car. 

[PDM]

Hi All,

Voice commands should work quite reliably.  If they are not working for you, this is not a design failure or "just a poor voice command system", it must be a fault in your vehicles.  We used to have a 2013 CT and the voice commands worked very well in that car.  Also in a 2015 NX.  There are known issues with MP3 media voice commands on newer cars with the MM19 system but this is due to a bug, not a fundamental deficiency in the voice command system.

Paul

[Goodplan53]

Thanks Paul,

So there is some hope, I guess!  It goes in for its annual service in February, so I will ask them to check it then.  

[First_Lexus]

I’ve never been able to get voice recognition to work reliably on any car. VW, Honda, MINI, Mercedes and Lexus - all the answer to a question nobody asked and very frustrating apart from the simplest commands. 

[NemesisUK]

I've found the voice control on my Lexus to be very particular on using the correct word/phrase whilst being on the correct screen for the action desired.

[PDM]

1 hour ago, First_Lexus said:

I’ve never been able to get voice recognition to work reliably on any car. VW, Honda, MINI, Mercedes and Lexus - all the answer to a question nobody asked and very frustrating apart from the simplest commands. 

Hi Ed,

This is very odd (well, I can't comment on VW, Honda, Mini or Merc...)  All the way back to 2013, in a Lexus, I have been able to use, as I do frequently, several types of voice command all very reliably:

Call <person name> at mobile/home

Play album <album name>

Play song <song name>

Go Home

The media commands can be broken on MM19 systems (the ones with ACP/AA) as the system mostly fails to index the memory stick contents into the voice command system, but otherwise I find all these to be very good indeed.  I have always found the phone based commands to work very well indeed.

For example, in the video that Robert posted above, I would clearly say the system is broken.  If I say "go home" on my RX, it will immediately set the destination to home, first time.  It sounds like Robert is speaking very clearly but for some reason it is not working.

Paul

[PDM]

26 minutes ago, NemesisUK said:

I've found the voice control on my Lexus to be very particular on using the correct word/phrase whilst being on the correct screen for the action desired.

Peter,

This also sounds like a fault.  When you press the voice command button the system should then bring up a new screen specifically for voice commands, with prompts.  It does not matter which screen you were previously on - the voice command system should behave the same... i.e. if you were on the map screen and say "play album name" it should do so in exactly the same way as if you were previously on the audio screen and issue the same command.

I am extremely annoyed that media voice commands often fail to work on MM19 as I use these a lot for playing music from an mp3 stick, but when the system is working, i.e. it indexes the memory stick properly, I find the voice commands very good indeed.

The system is, however, sensitive to a small number of command words only, so you do need to know what these are.  If you deviate from these then it will not work, but stick to them and IMHO it works well (subject to the MM19 software bug).

Those of you having issues should perhaps ask to try another vehicle at the dealer, because you should not be having these problems.  Voice commands on a Lexus are not a silly gimmick if there are no faults - they really work well and stop you having to use menus when driving.

Paul 

[black-on-black]

23 hours ago, PDM said:

Robert,

What year and model of vehicle is this?An RX450h?  Which model year?

It could well be a microphone problem.

On Lexus Tech there is a procedure for diagnosing voice recognition faults. Can you point your dealer to that?

Paul

2017 RX450h The dealer told me to try repeating the commands ten times to learn my Voice. This unfortunately didn't work. We do have at some point.

[black-on-black]

10 hours ago, PDM said:

Peter,

This also sounds like a fault.  When you press the voice command button the system should then bring up a new screen specifically for voice commands, with prompts.  It does not matter which screen you were previously on - the voice command system should behave the same... i.e. if you were on the map screen and say "play album name" it should do so in exactly the same way as if you were previously on the audio screen and issue the same command.

I am extremely annoyed that media voice commands often fail to work on MM19 as I use these a lot for playing music from an mp3 stick, but when the system is working, i.e. it indexes the memory stick properly, I find the voice commands very good indeed.

The system is, however, sensitive to a small number of command words only, so you do need to know what these are.  If you deviate from these then it will not work, but stick to them and IMHO it works well (subject to the MM19 software bug).

Those of you having issues should perhaps ask to try another vehicle at the dealer, because you should not be having these problems.  Voice commands on a Lexus are not a silly gimmick if there are no faults - they really work well and stop you having to use menus when driving.

Paul 

It's hilarious that Is250 F Sport never had that much difficulty recognising my voice. 🤨😀

[First_Lexus]

12 hours ago, PDM said:

Hi Ed,

This is very odd (well, I can't comment on VW, Honda, Mini or Merc...)  All the way back to 2013, in a Lexus, I have been able to use, as I do frequently, several types of voice command all very reliably:

Call <person name> at mobile/home

Play album <album name>

Play song <song name>

Go Home

The media commands can be broken on MM19 systems (the ones with ACP/AA) as the system mostly fails to index the memory stick contents into the voice command system, but otherwise I find all these to be very good indeed.  I have always found the phone based commands to work very well indeed.

For example, in the video that Robert posted above, I would clearly say the system is broken.  If I say "go home" on my RX, it will immediately set the destination to home, first time.  It sounds like Robert is speaking very clearly but for some reason it is not working.

Paul

^^ Thanks @PDM

It does work sometimes - perhaps 50% of the time. My frustration is why the exact same commands work sometimes but not others, and this has been common across every vehicle that I’ve used with the function. I haven’t really tried it much with my RX, but the initial ‘play’ indicated it was the same as my previous NX. Should add I don’t have an accent as such. I was born and raised in the Home Counties, and went to particular types of school…maybe it’s not tuned for Received Pronunciation. 🙃

I can’t really be bothered to persevere tbh - I’m happy to use the buttons, touchpad and touchscreen. 

[Alan305]

If your model has Android Auto or Car Play try your voice on that. My favourite on AA is hey Google, “tell me a joke”

That will at least test some of the hardware.

[PDM]

6 minutes ago, First_Lexus said:

^^ Thanks @PDM

It does work sometimes - perhaps 50% of the time. My frustration is why the exact same commands work sometimes but not others, and this has been common across every vehicle that I’ve used with the function. I haven’t really tried it much with my RX, but the initial ‘play’ indicated it was the same as my previous NX. Should add I don’t have an accent as such. I was born and raised in the Home Counties, and went to particular types of school…maybe it’s not tuned for Received Pronunciation. 🙃

I can’t really be bothered to persevere tbh - I’m happy to use the buttons, touchpad and touchscreen. 

Hi Ed,

I have to be careful here as I have lived in London for two decades now, but I was raised in Yorkshire, and it has no problems with my accent!  I would say the accuracy is around 90% for me, perhaps higher.  When the media commands are working (if the stick was successfully indexed) it even has some intelligence in the music play back commands for instance, so if I say:

Play Album "Bat out of Hell 2"

It will respond with "Playing album Bat out of hell 2, Back into Hell"...  so you can see that whilst the command part ("play album") has to be exact, there is some intelligent pattern matching on the album name so that if I miss the "back into Hell part" is still matches what it can.

It's strange how the system seems very very bad in some cases but pretty good in others.

Paul

[PDM]

1 hour ago, black-on-black said:

2017 RX450h The dealer told me to try repeating the commands ten times to learn my Voice. This unfortunately didn't work. We do have at some point.

Hmmm... I don't think it is adaptive... but I have not seen the implementation of course.  I think in the USA vehicles there is an option to train the voice commands (did we used to have this in the UK a long time ago?  Can't remember for sure, but we do not have it now)

Paul

[PDM]

1 hour ago, black-on-black said:

It's hilarious that Is250 F Sport never had that much difficulty recognising my voice. 🤨😀

I do think the Lexus infotainment systems have, over the years, moved from being simple on features and bug free, to gaining more features but also gaining a lot of bugs... perhaps this is what you are seeing.

Paul

[First_Lexus]

6 minutes ago, PDM said:

Hi Ed,

I have to be careful here as I have lived in London for two decades now, but I was raised in Yorkshire, and it has no problems with my accent!  I would say the accuracy is around 90% for me, perhaps higher.  When the media commands are working (if the stick was successfully indexed) it even has some intelligence in the music play back commands for instance, so if I say:

Play Album "Bat out of Hell 2"

It will respond with "Playing album Bat out of hell 2, Back into Hell"...  so you can see that whilst the command part ("play album") has to be exact, there is some intelligent pattern matching on the album name so that if I miss the "back into Hell part" is still matches what it can.

It's strange how the system seems very very bad in some cases but pretty good in others.

Paul

Ah, I don’t use a memory stick for music. Pre-Apple Car Play I bluetoothed (if that’s a word) direct to Spotify. I use Siri on my Iphone with 95% accuracy and Google Home with perhaps 90% (it does seem determined to play BBC Radio Wales when I ask for BBC Radio 5 Live - maybe 25% of the time, weird!) but actually I suppose the answer is simply to use Siri rather than the Lexus voice control. That should work, correct?

[PDM]

21 minutes ago, First_Lexus said:

Ah, I don’t use a memory stick for music. Pre-Apple Car Play I bluetoothed (if that’s a word) direct to Spotify. I use Siri on my iPhone with 95% accuracy and Google Home with perhaps 90% (it does seem determined to play BBC Radio Wales when I ask for BBC Radio 5 Live - maybe 25% of the time, weird!) but actually I suppose the answer is simply to use Siri rather than the Lexus voice control. That should work, correct?

Yes, then you will be totally independent of the Lexus system.

Paul