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How Amazon鈥檚 Alexa became a Tesla valet

A developer has integrated Tesla's summoning feature with Amazon Echo's Alexa. The resulting voice-activated car control system shows the potential for more Internet of Things applications. 

The newest sign 2016 is the future: a voice-activated valet that will will summon your vehicle.

Tesla laid the groundwork when they created the 鈥渟ummoning鈥 system for their electric cars, which allows owners to sit back and watch while a car parks itself. But one developer took the system to another level last weekend by linking it to the voice activated command hub Amazon Echo.

The result: a virtual assistant that can control your car, or at least tell it to pull out of the garage (visible in the video above). And several new questions about just how much increasingly sophisticated virtual assistants will be able to assist in daily home life.

"Imagine the day I could ask Alexa from within my house to ,鈥 Jason Goecke, the developer behind the project, says in an article on Teslarati. 鈥淎ll the technologies are already here, it's stringing them together just right.鈥

When Amazon Echo first hit markets, there was understandable confusion over just what it was. It filled the requirements for a voice-activated speaker system, but the marketing and commercials for the device suggested it had the 鈥撀爄t responded to voice commands, answered questions, controlled appliances, told jokes, and came with a name: 鈥淎lexa.鈥

With the addition of a few updates, it soon became a hit with early adopters, becoming a on Amazon.com. ZDNet鈥檚 James Kendrick:

I admit that now I rarely think about the Echo. Not because I don't use it much, but because using and operating it by voice has become natural to my daily routine.

I find Alexa, I mean the Echo, to be a part of my life as I use it constantly. I tell "her" what I want and the Echo delivers.

And although Alexa has some unique features, like being tied to a speaker system, it arrived in the midst of a tech trend. Similar virtual assistant programs have been developed by a 聽range of other tech companies, including Microsoft鈥檚 Cortana, Apple鈥檚 Siri, Google鈥檚 Google Now, and newcomer Viv.

Those assistant programs are increasingly able to interact with 鈥淚nternet of Things鈥 Hubs, like Google Nest and Samsung鈥檚 SmartThings Hub, to offer an unprecedented level of service via voice command.

To name a few services :

  • Turning on lights
  • Setting the temperature in a home
  • Accessing Spotify, Pandora, or iTunes to play music
  • Ordering Domino鈥檚 pizza
  • Tweeting and posting on other social mediums
  • Answering questions via Google

The latest addition of functional control of a car wasn鈥檛 an official perk. It required using an unofficial Tesla Application Programing Interface (API), the system behind how an application interacts with other systems, a few third-party systems, and a customized command for Alexa. Overall, 鈥渁 fun weekend project,鈥 according to Mr. Goecke.

But the unofficial application hints at how many integrations and applications could arise as the Internet of Things matures, an industry, which Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers had the potential to be worth $19 trillion.

"Tesla has built the beginnings of an excellent platform, but it will take a concerted effort to attract developers to build the apps that even Elon Musk hasn't dreamed of (yet),"聽Goecke said.聽

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