Clarity Strengthens Team to Deliver Hands-Free CVC to Telematics Marketplace.

Business & Technology Editors

TROY, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2001

Clarity LLC, (www.clarityco.com), whose "Clear Voice Capture" (CVC(TM)) software technology extracts the voice of interest in noisy environments, enabling voice based interfaces to perform in real world situations, announced that Stephen Rittmueller, 31, has joined Clarity as Senior Digital Signal Processing Acoustical System Engineer from speech recognition company Nuance Communications, Inc.

Prior to joining Nuance, Mr. Rittmueller was a Senior Acoustical Engineer with the Motorola Telematics Communication Group, where he was a member of the design team that introduced the next generation of the OnStar product-line. He was also responsible for tuning the audio input systems and algorithms, designed to enable the OnStar voice-based interface Virtual Advisor(TM) program.

Mr. Rittmueller earned a Bachelors and Masters of Science degree in engineering mechanics from Iowa State University with area of concentration in acoustical engineering and testing.

Commenting on Mr. Rittmueller's addition to Clarity, Jim Wargnier, Vice President Engineering, noted that, "Steve and I had a terrific working relationship while I was at OnStar and Steve was at Motorola. He was the go-to-guy at Motorola to enable OnStar's voice activated Virtual Advisor system, which used the Nuance speech recognition engine. Steve will be a great addition to our team and will facilitate our work with Motorola, Nuance, and OnStar in addition to putting Clarity in a position to work with other hands-free kit providers."

Also, Clarity announced that it had promoted Norman C. Torrey to Vice President - Sales and increased his responsibilities to include European markets in addition to the Eastern Region of the United States.

Mr. Torrey, 33 joined Clarity in June 2000 from Perceptron Corp. (PRCP-NASDAQ), which develops, manufactures and sells Laser vision quality measurement systems where he was involved in technical sales management. Prior to that, he was a plant manager for Engineering Manufacturing Services.

An engineer from the University of Michigan, Mr. Torrey, has considerable experience marketing and selling emerging concept technologies. Earlier in his career, he was president and principal of Aqua Innovations, an automotive and aerospace prototyping company that utilized ultra high pressure water jet technology.

Fred Nussbaum, Executive Vice President Sales and Marketing, noted that, "Norm has been intensely engaged with our customers and has demonstrated the ability to manage the entire sales process, sufficient to match his authority with his responsibility."

Clarity's CVC extracts the voice of interest being transmitted, separating it from interfering environmental audio clutter, including road noise, music, machinery and other nearby voices and extraneous sounds. This optimizes the user's ability to communicate with voice-based devices and with others, while preserving critical bandwidth in telecommunications systems.

Clarity has targeted the automotive telematics area, as well as portable communications devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones and mobile Internet appliances with its breakthrough voice extraction Clear Voice Capture, CVC(TM), software technology. Users of such devices often find themselves in noisy environments where the voice interface is disabled or the transmission is difficult, if not impossible to hear.

Clarity's objective is to be a leading provider of software products that improve the quality and efficiency of voice activated human-machine interfaces. Clarity's primary strategy is to enter into co-development alliances and licensing arrangements with Original Equipment Manufacturers and suppliers in multiple industries, including automotive telematics, semiconductor manufacturers, telecommunications network operators and device makers worldwide.