SoundHound Brings Parking Spot Searching to Houndify Voice Assistants With Parkopedia Partnership

Voice AI developer SoundHound is adding the ability to find and reserve parking spaces to its Houndify platform thanks to a new partnership with parking services provider Parkopedia. Cars and devices with Houndify-based voice asssistants will be able to add Parkopedia’s data as a voice command so a driver could find out nearby places to park based on where they are at the moment.

Parking Voices

When installed into a Houndify-based voice assistant, a user will be able to ask about the nearest parking to where they are and find out what street and garage parking spots are around, their cost, and if there are free spots. Parkopedia boasts that its system includes more than 70 million parking spaces in 15,000 cities and 89 countries. Parkopedia will function as a content domain on Houndify, available as a third-party service for any SoundHound partner that wants to incorporate it. Parkopedia has never shared its data to independant voice assistant developers before, but has agreed to make its information available through SoundHound’s technology.

“SoundHound Inc. is a leader in voice-enabled technology, and we are delighted our parking information will be accessible on their growing platform,” Parkopedia COO Hans Puvogel said in a statement. “Being a part of Houndify’s network allows automotive partners and developers a convenient way to add voice-enabled parking services into their product offering, helping millions of users access our parking data and find suitable parking near their destination.”

As a new content domain, Parkopedia’s services will be available not just for cars using Houndify, but hotels, navigationa tools, and any of the other variety of industries working with SoundHound for which it would be relevant. SoundHound counts several hundred content domains as part of Houndify, accessing music, weather, trivia, and other data, all accessible by voice request when the platform is in use.

“This partnership with Parkopedia is a key milestone in the growth of our extensive library of Houndify voice-enabled content domains,” SoundHound vice president of corporate strategy and international expansion Kamyar Mohajer said in a statement. “With this domain, our Houndify partners will have access to the most detailed information available from the leader in parking data and services.”

Auto Houndify

Cars and the automotive industry are a particularly fruitful aspect of SOundHound’s partnerships as it continues to add new car companies to its list. In August, Kia debuted a new car with a Houndify-based voice assistant, part of a growing partnership between the two companies. In January, Honda announced plans to use Houndify as the basis for its voice assistant, building on the AI’s presence in Hyundai and Mercedes vehicles. Cars are just one of SoundHound’s ventures, though, including a recent high-profile addition of Voice Scan to Snapchat that lets people add a filter with a vocal request. That’s on top of hotel rooms, streaming services like Pandora, and other outlets. Cars may not be central to SoundHound, but they are continuing to rise as central to the voice tech industry. Parkopedia will help SoundHound compete with some of the bigger voice tech developers and more car-focused firms like Cerence, a Nuance spin-off that has rapidly added a whole ecosystem of features and platforms for carmakers looking to add a voice assistant. As voice assistants in vehicles become the standard,  providing parking information will be as crucial as traffic information.

Follow @voicebotai    Follow @erichschwartz

Kia Debuts New Smart Car Powered by SoundHound Voice Assistant

Mastercard and SoundHound’s Voice Assistant Goes to White Castle

Snapchat Taps SoundHound to Add Voice Search for Filters in the App