New Google Assistant SDK will bring intelligence to just about any hardware

Google Assistant is making another expansion, but this time it's important from a hardware developer perspective. Google has just announced a developer preview of the Google Assistant SDK, which will allow hardware developers to use the intelligence of the Assistant for their projects.

This isn't designed to just make Google Home clones.

It's a powerful tool because Google Assistant voice control goes well beyond simply taking in a few words and performing a simple action. Assistant can parse full phrases or sentences and give the developer a full read out of the text as well as infer different insights based on the structure of what was said. It's the sort of natural language processing we're all getting used to when using Assistant on phones and Google Home, but it's something that developers are now getting for free rather than having to build something themselves.

Google says this is very much an early release of the Google Assistant SDK, and there are several features currently in development including hotword support and companion app integration. Developers can get to know the Google Assistant SDK from the Google Developers website and get started.

Andrew Martonik

Andrew was an Executive Editor, U.S. at Android Central between 2012 and 2020.