«Yandex presented the smart speaker “Station Light 2”. Its speaker has become more powerful, an LED display has appeared, and the function of automatically connecting to well-known Wi-Fi networks has appeared. The Alice voice assistant has received support from emotional synthesis technology – it has become more like a live interlocutor who can sympathize or cheer.
Image source: yandex.ru/company
Emotional synthesis technology helps “Alice” take into account the context of the dialogue and, based on this data, select the emotional coloring of her remarks: sympathy, surprise, friendliness, sadness or resentment. Station Light 2 is the first Yandex smart speaker to support this function. In the “Understand Children” mode, the voice assistant recognizes children’s voices and shows emotions not only in a conversation with the user, but also, for example, when reading fairy tales to children or playing music. In the future, emotional synthesis will appear in other devices with “Alice”.
The second means of emotional interaction was the LED display that appeared on the smart speaker. With its help, the voice assistant can smile at the user, wink at him, express embarrassment or sadness; You can also use the screen for practical purposes – display a clock or weather forecast on it. The power of the Station Light 2 speaker increased to 6 W – it was designed specifically for the device and placed in a housing with an increased acoustic volume, which helped increase the purity and richness of the sound and add bass. You can take the device with you – it remembers Wi-Fi networks to which it was previously connected, and by the end of the year, in addition to it, Yandex will release a battery with a resource of three hours of music playback.
At the start of sales, “Station Light 2” is available in purple, pink and blue colors; the device comes with stickers and masks that can be used to decorate its body. By the end of the year, the smart speaker will also appear in orange, green and dark gray versions. The retail price of Yandex Station Light 2 is 5,990 rubles.