Why it matters to you
You can now build your own intelligent, voice-controlled device with the Google Assistant software development kit.
Google’s Assistant is the latest digital personal assistant software to hit devices, joining Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Amazon Alexa in the list of major options. Assistant originally arrived in Google’s Allo messaging app, the Google Pixel smartphone, and Google Home.
Since its original release, Google Assistant has made its way to other Android smartphones running Android Marshmallow and Nougat and to Android Wear devices, with Android Auto and Android TV coming next. And now, Google is making the digital assistant available to even more devices with the Google Assistant software development kit (SDK).
Using the SDK, developers can plug Google Assistant into any device that meets the general specifications. For now, a developer preview supports any device built with the Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computer and later in 2017, Google will make the SDK accessible on a wider range of hardware.
The Google Assistant SDK will support all of the voice control, natural language understanding, and Google intelligence that Google Assistant provides on all of its currently supported devices. The SDK includes a gRPC application programming interface (API) and a Python open source client for authentication and API access. The SDK can interface with a number of other languages including Java, Python, C#, Node.js, and Ruby.
Google has made available a selection of samples and documentation. One of the samples was created by Deeplocal, a Pittsburgh-based innovation studio that used the Google Assistant SDK to create a “mocktails mixer.” Check out the video to see how the developers built their demo from the ground up.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyq60edXzvc?feature=oembed&w=100&h=100]
If you are interested in giving the Google Assistant SDK a try, then you can head over to the new Google+ developer community that Google established. Anyone who wants to build a commercial product that integrates Google Assistant can contact Google for more information. Finally, sign up here to get on a mailing list that will keep you up to date on all of the happenings.