Method of operating vehicular, hands-free telephone system
First Claim
1. A hands-free telephone system for a vehicle, the system comprising:
- a portable phone located in the vehicle, the portable phone being operable for wirelessly making a call with a phone external to the vehicle;
a vehicle appliance having a microphone for receiving vocal communications including voice commands from an operator of the vehicle, the vehicle appliance being connected to a speaker of the vehicle for outputting vocal communications to the operator;
the vehicle appliance further including a controller, a voice recognition module, a communications module, memory, and a voice synthesizer;
the voice recognition module being operable for receiving and recognizing multiple voice commands stated by the operator into the microphone at one time;
the communications module being operable for wirelessly communicating with the portable phone;
the memory being operable for storing a list of entities and associated telephone numbers, and for storing a list of account names and associated account numbers and passwords;
the voice synthesizer being operable for generating vocal communications for output by the vehicle speaker;
wherein the controller is operable to control operation of the vehicle appliance in accordance with multiple voice commands stated by the operator at one time.
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0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A hands-free, Bluetooth™ enabled telephone system for a vehicle is configured to enable an operator such as the driver of the vehicle to say multiple voice commands at one time in order to control the operation of the telephone system. Such multiple commands include “Dial <name>”, “Dial <name location>”, “Dial <number>”, and “Send <account number>.” The hands-free, Bluetooth™ enabled telephone system enables the pairing between Bluetooth™ enabled cell phones and a Bluetooth™ communications module of the telephone system to be conducted in a human friendly manner. The hands-free, Bluetooth™ enabled telephone system enables the telephone system to generate DTMF tones corresponding to a numeric account number or password in response to the driver vocally saying an account name associated with the numeric account number or password during a call between the driver and a voice-automated, menu-driven system for receipt by the menu-driven system.
78 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A hands-free telephone system for a vehicle, the system comprising:
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a portable phone located in the vehicle, the portable phone being operable for wirelessly making a call with a phone external to the vehicle;
a vehicle appliance having a microphone for receiving vocal communications including voice commands from an operator of the vehicle, the vehicle appliance being connected to a speaker of the vehicle for outputting vocal communications to the operator;
the vehicle appliance further including a controller, a voice recognition module, a communications module, memory, and a voice synthesizer;
the voice recognition module being operable for receiving and recognizing multiple voice commands stated by the operator into the microphone at one time;
the communications module being operable for wirelessly communicating with the portable phone;
the memory being operable for storing a list of entities and associated telephone numbers, and for storing a list of account names and associated account numbers and passwords;
the voice synthesizer being operable for generating vocal communications for output by the vehicle speaker;
wherein the controller is operable to control operation of the vehicle appliance in accordance with multiple voice commands stated by the operator at one time. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A hands-free telephone system for a vehicle, the system comprising:
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a portable phone located in the vehicle, the portable phone being operable for wirelessly making a call with a phone external to the vehicle;
a vehicle appliance having a microphone for receiving vocal communications including voice commands from an operator of the vehicle, the vehicle appliance being connected to a speaker of the vehicle for outputting vocal communications to the operator;
the vehicle appliance further including a controller, a voice recognition module, a communications module, memory, and a voice synthesizer;
the voice recognition module being operable for receiving and recognizing multiple voice commands stated by the operator into the microphone at one time;
the communications module being operable for wirelessly communicating with the portable phone;
the memory being operable for storing a list of names and associated numbers;
the voice synthesizer being operable for generating vocal communications for output by the vehicle speaker;
wherein during a call between the portable phone and an external phone the controller is operable to respond to the operator'"'"'s vocal command “
Send <
name>
”
by accessing the memory to locate a stored account number associated with the <
name> and
causing the communications module to wirelessly communicate DTMF tones corresponding to the digits of the number to the portable phone for the portable phone to transfer to the external phone during the call. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A method of pairing a Bluetooth™
- enabled devices including a portable phone with a Bluetooth™
communications module of a vehicular, hands-free telephone system, the method comprising;
using vocal communications to prompt an operator of the portable phone to enter a given PIN number into the portable phone;
searching for the presence of any Bluetooth™
enabled devices within the vicinity of the Bluetooth™
communications module;
using vocal communications to prompt the operator to vocally state a name for the portable phone;
using vocal communications to prompt the operator to vocally state a pairing priority to be assigned to the portable phone; and
if the assigned pairing priority is not assigned to another Bluetooth™
enabled device, then associating the name and the pairing priority to the portable phone. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20)
- enabled devices including a portable phone with a Bluetooth™
Specification