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If possible use Google Maps voice assistant instead of whatever robotic assistant you are using now

Feature Requests

As described in the title, ABRP’s navigation assistant is one the most dull ones ive ever seen. Also it literally takes a deep breath ( very long sound cutoff ) before giving directions and it gives directions pretty awfully. Leagues behing what Google Maps offers.

Posted by ABRP User #3010215 ·
Status: Completed13 comments

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Comments13

  • Linda ABRP

    Team•

    Aug 4

    Hi

    You can change the voice in the settings in the app. Go to Display & Appearance and then scroll down to Driving mode. Click at Navigation voice. You can also install more voices from your phone.

    • ABRP User #3010215

      •

      Aug 4

      No, what ABRP has is basically an AI voice that works absolutely horrendous, Google Maps has it way better.

      Please set your app to have Turkish navigation sound/asistant , route to somewhere and listen a bit. Do the same on Google Maps at the same time and you will know even for untrained ear difference is clear as day.

      • Linda ABRP

        Team•

        Aug 5

        We can’t unfortunately change that.

        • ABRP User #3010215

          •

          Aug 5

          Nor ABRP aka Rivian cant cant improve it somehow? That AI sound is completely wrong, it cant pronounce half of the things.

  • Johannes ABRP

    Team•

    Sep 10

    The voice used in ABRP is configured by your phone’s OS. In many cases, downloading and selecting an alternative or higher‑quality voice in your device’s accessibility settings significantly improves pronunciation and naturalness.

    Please also ensure that you have chosen a “premium” Turkish voice where available in your OS settings, and then select that voice in ABRP app under Settings → Display & Appearance → Navigation Voice

    For reference, here is a recording from an iOS phone, using “Zoe (Premium)”

    • ABRP User #3010215

      •

      Sep 10

      I wish you checked Android first to make this comment. There are two voice engines available on ABRP Android app exposed on my end.

      Samsung Text to Speech and Google Voice Recognition and Synthesis. Samsung TTS doesn’t work, only working one is Google, as reported by someone else here months ago either and ABRP simply said #wontfix. So no luck trying alternatives either.

      I get everything in ABRP is IOS first and IOS centric due to US userbase but please check the actual situations first on Android before replying. Anyways, Google one here works absolutely horrendous. Everything it says is cut off, doesnt make sense gramatically either. Google Maps appearently uses something else for voice directions because it is gramatically correct on everything. So it is not a premium male voice or female voice issue. It is a “do you use a proper navigation sound engine or not” , which appearently ABRP doesnt and uses something that Google offers for lazy devs and clearly such things are inferior, as always.

      Please test on Android and get back to me.

      https://abrp.featurebase.app/p/tts-engines-other-than-google-speech-recognition-and-synthesis-not/comment/6a2e66b06996356d819cdf41

      • Johannes ABRP

        Team•

        Sep 10

        I will address your points one by one:


        The reason the earlier issue was marked “won’t fix” is not because we consider it unimportant, but because it is happening entirely outside of what ABRP can influence. We can request text with timing and metadata, but we cannot change how a specific vendor’s TTS engine starts, stops, or pronounces that text once it receives it.


        ABRP is not iOS‑first, and the US is not our largest user base. Europe is by far our largest market. The fact that the demo above is from iOS is not meant to suggest a preference for that platform, but simply to illustrate that the ABRP navigation voice works correctly when the underlying OS‑ and OEM‑level components behave as expected.

        We have successfully run our voice assistant on android, with high quality voice.


        Google Maps uses Google’s own tightly integrated navigation stack and voice. They control the entire pipeline, how routes are broken into instructions, how those instructions are phrased and punctuated, what prosody and pauses are applied, and how the TTS models are tuned specifically for their turn‑by‑turn navigation in each supported language. There is no third party involved for them, which gives them a level of control that third‑party apps like ABRP do not have when using the OS‑level TTS interface.


        I am sorry that, given these constraints, the result on your specific Android/Turkish setup does not meet your expectations. Because the behavior you describe is driven by components outside ABRP, there is unfortunately nothing further we can change in the app itself for this case, and we will therefore keep this ticket closed.


        Thank you for taking the time to share such detailed feedback, and I hope you find a setup and app combination that works well for you.

        Happy driving!

        • ABRP User #3010215

          •

          Sep 10

          Thanks for the answer. Thing is, navigation apps like Tomtom ( which car comes with but ofc i dont use it regularly ) has proper sound engines ( most likely paid instead of relying Google’s solutions? ) or even PC games like Euro Truck Simulator 2 ( 20 dollar game, pay once, get updates forever) has actually nice navigation sound engine for this.

          So does that mean ABRP aka Rivian doesnt have any financial means to improve it or simply not in the roadmap for Android?

          I got the impression of why Android is not so worthy from other TTS related issue someone else opened and linked here. It sounds to me others arent happy either with current way of ABRP handling this particular aspect.

          So there is simply zero solution on horizon? Thats a bummer tbh

          • Johannes ABRP

            Team•

            Sep 10

            Just to clarify one important point: we have tested ABRP’s navigation voice on Android, and in those setups it does work well.

            Products with built‑in systems typically ship with their own, tightly integrated and often platform‑specific voice packs or engines. They can license or build voices that are bundled with that single environment, on fixed hardware or a specific platform. In contrast, ABRP is a cross‑platform mobile app that runs on a wide range of Android and iOS devices, including automotive, and has to integrate with the OS‑level TTS interfaces provided by Google, Samsung, Apple, car OEMs, etc. Moving from that model to “our own” full navigation sound engine for all combinations of devices, OS versions, languages, and in‑car systems would be a very large, ongoing project in cost, maintenance, and complexity.

            • ABRP User #3010215

              •

              Sep 10

              I got it. Does Google listen to feedback from fairly big corps like Rivian/ABRP? Surely they wont listen to me as a sole user but maybe with a push from ABRP things can change?

              Example: Google Maps says “150 metre sonra sağa dönün” translates to “in 150 meters turn right” while ABRP with Google Synthesis ( others options are not selectable due to ABRP limitations) says : “150 metre sonra sağa dün” , dün means yesterday, it should say “dön” for “turn” , translates to “ In 150 meters yesterday to right”

              Google Maps: “XXYZ sokağına dönün” which translates to “Turn to XXYZ street”

              ABRP: “Dün, XXYZ sokak-e” , which means “yesterday, XXYZ to”

              This is the issue. Both phonetically and gramatically it works awful and i cant select another TTS even to compare or settle with one.

              • Johannes ABRP

                Team•

                Sep 10

                I’ll pass this to our QA.

                • ABRP User #3010215

                  •

                  Sep 10

                  Thanks and sorry for being a PITA 😅

                  • Johannes ABRP

                    Team•

                    Sep 11

                    Don’t worry, I appreciate your opinion and your feedback a lot.