Sybase iAnywhere is enhancing its presence in the telematics and embedded devices markets by enabling embedded applications to provide intelligent user interfaces and context-aware user interactions. Extending the company’s Answers Anywhere technology, Sybase iAnywhere now offers a natural language engine that targets the memory-constrained world of embedded devices.

The new Answers Anywhere functionality enables developers to improve the user experience of resource-constrained devices which otherwise would have limited user interface capabilities. Interacting in a natural, free-form, and context-sensitive way will generate a higher degree of satisfaction, reduce training requirements, and result in a higher task completion rate for users. For example, an automotive telematics product would allow users to ask for information or control applications in their own words to easily access directions, weather, yellow page content, or control functionality such as air conditioning or entertainment systems.

New Answers Anywhere functionality for telematics and embedded devices includes:

• A Java-based, graphics-oriented development tool for generating an agent network model of the natural language application
• Automatic C++ code generator optimized for size and performance in embedded applications
• Support for embedded systems running Windows CE or the QNX operating systems
• Adaptive, agent-oriented software architecture incorporating 22 natural language patents