The Amazon Lex service is now generally available, announced at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) 2017 San Francisco Summit. Amazon Lex is a fully managed AI service that enables developers to build conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text. It is powered by the same deep learning technologies used in Amazon Alexa.

For our June 2017 issue, we cover recent patents dealing with audio coding.

The IEEE BMC reports on a new journal proposal, the IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science and the IEEE Conference on Biometrics Theory, Application and Systems

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have developed a new navigation system that is based entirely on existing terrestrial signals, such as cellular and Wi-Fi, rather than GPS. The new technology, which the researchers claim is both highly reliable and accurate, can function as a standalone alternative to GPS or as an alternative to satellite signals to enable highly reliable, consistent, and tamper-proof navigation in autonomous systems, such as robots, driverless terrestrial vehicles, and unmanned aerial vehicles.