Mass-Scale, User-Independent, Device-Independent Voice Messaging System

• US 20080109221A1
• Filed: 10/31/2007
• Published: 05/08/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/10/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: SpinVox Limited (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: SpinVox Limited (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Doulton, Daniel
• Application Number:
  US11/931,097
• Publication Number:
  US 20080109221A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/235
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/60 Medium conversion
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4936 Speech interaction details speech recognition per se G10L15/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5183 Call or contact centers with computer-telephony arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/53333 Message receiving aspects

Abstract

A mass-scale, user-independent, device-independent, voice messaging system that converts unstructured voice messages into text for display on a screen is disclosed. The system comprises (i) computer implemented sub-systems and also (ii) a network connection to human operators providing transcription and quality control; the system being adapted to optimise the effectiveness of the human operators by further comprising 3 core sub-systems, namely (i) a pre-processing front end that determines an appropriate conversion strategy; (ii) one or more conversion resources; and (iii) a quality control sub-system.

Claims

1. A mass-scale, user-independent, device-independent, voice messaging system that converts an unstructured voice message into text for display on a screen;

the system comprising (i) computer implemented sub-systems and also (ii) a network connection to human operators providing transcription and quality control;

the system being adapted to optimise the effectiveness of the human operators by further comprising;

a computer implemented pre-processing front-end sub-system that determines an appropriate conversion strategy used to convert the voice message.

2. The system of claim 1 in which the pre-processing front end optimises the quality of the audio for conversion by removing noise.

3. The system of claim 1 in which the pre-processing front end optimises the quality of the audio for conversion by cleaning up known defects.

4. The system of claim 1 in which the pre-processing front end optimises the quality of the audio for conversion by normalising volume/signal energy.

5. The system of claim 1 in which the pre-processing front end optimises the quality of the audio for conversion by removing silent/empty sections and classifies the message type for optimally routing the message for conversion, or not.

6. The system of claim 1 in which the pre-processing front-end determines the language being used by the caller, based on one or more of the following:

knowledge about registration, location and call history of caller and/or receiver.

7. The system of claim 1 in which the pre-processing front-end selects a particular ASR engine to convert a message or part of a message.

8. The system of claim 1 in which different conversion resources, such as ASR engines, are used for different parts of the same message.

9. The system of claim 1 in which different conversion resources, such as ASR engines, are used for different messages.

10. The system of claim 1 in which the human operators are treated as ASR engines.

11. The system of claim 1 in which the pre-processing front-end uses or is connected with a recogniser confidence sub-system to determine automatically the confidence level associated with a conversion of a specific message, or part of a message, and a particular conversion resource, such as an ASR engine, is then deployed depending on that confidence level.

12. The system of claim 1 in which the conversion strategy involves the selection a conversion strategy from a set of conversion strategies that include the following:

(i) messages for which an ASR conversion confidence is sufficiently high are checked automatically by a quality assessment sub-system for conformance to quality standards;

(ii) messages for which the ASR conversion confidence is not sufficiently high are routed to a human operator for checking and, if necessary, correction;

(iii) messages for which the ASR conversion confidence is very low are flagged as unconvertible and the user is informed of the receipt of an unconvertible message.

13. The system of claim 1 in which the message is a voicemail intended for a mobile telephone and the voice message is converted to text and sent to that mobile telephone.

14. The system of claim 1 in which the message is a voice message intended for an instant messaging service and the voice message is converted to text and sent to an instant messaging service for a display on a screen.

15. The system of claim 1 in which the message is a voice message intended for a web service and the voice message is converted to text and sent to a server for display as part of the web service.

16. The system of claim 1 in which the message is a voice message intended to be converted to text format and sent as a text message.

17. The system of claim 1 in which the message is a voice message intended to be converted to text format and sent as an email message.

18. The system of claim 1 in which the message is a voice message intended to be converted to text format and sent as a note or memo, by email or text, to an originator of the message.

19. A mobile telephone network that is connected to the system of claim 1.

20. A mobile telephone when displaying a message converted by the system of claim 1.

21. A computer display screen when displaying a message converted by the system of claim 1.

22. A method of providing voice messaging, comprising the step of a user sending a voice message to a messaging system as claimed in claim 1.