Windows Mobile which originally touts Cortana may have died, but this voice control technology from the Redmond software giant continues to live on, more recently, on a la-Amazon Echo Harman Kardon speaker. Prior to that, the software juggernaut has also introduced Cortana to another home IoT device and it was a climate control system, AKA smart thermostat. Like the speaker, Microsoft did not dive into it on its own; it has collaborated with long-time thermostat maker Johnson Controls to realize the other home for Cortana.
It is called GLAS, a Nest-like device that lets features a decidedly futuristic translucent touch display and uses Cortana voice controls for manipulations – directly on the device. There’s no need for intermediaries like speaker or an app installed on a smartphone. To change temperature, all you have to do is speak to GLAS. Thanks to the Windows 10 IoT core and Microsoft Azure Cloud, GLAS is able to detect your presence in the room and constantly sniff out the air quality of both indoors and outdoors to ensure your home, office or wherever hooked with GLAS, will be energy efficient through intelligently tweaking the settings, according to the preview video.
Now, how GLAS will actually work and what other hardware are required are unclear now. That being said, it is no surprise that launch details are equally obscure at this point. Skip ahead for the aforementioned product video.
Image: Microsoft.
via Engadget.
