AUTOMATED DETECTION OF SPOKEN NUMBERS IN VOICE MESSAGES

• US 20080187110A1
• Filed: 04/08/2008
• Published: 08/07/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/27/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Day, Paul Reuben, Bates, Cary Lee, Santosuosso, John Matthew
• Granted Patent: US 8,265,934 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/88.01
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence

Abstract

An apparatus and program product utilize voice recognition to process voice messages in an automated manner to detect spoken numbers contained therein. Detected spoken numbers can then be utilized to set a start position at which to begin playback of a voice message, e.g., to permit a user to locate and transcribe a telephone number spoken by a message sender. Automated number detection may also be utilized to automatically dial telephone numbers mentioned in a voice message, as well as in the display of textual representations of such numbers to a user.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising:

a memory within which is resident a voice message; and

a program resident in the memory and configured to perform voice recognition on at least a portion of the voice message to generate a textual representation of the voice message, to detect a position of a spoken number in the textual representation of the voice message, to determine a playback start position based upon the position of the spoken number, and to play the voice message starting at the playback start position, wherein the program is further configured to receive user input to find a next number from a current playback position in the voice message, and wherein the program is configured to detect the position of the spoken number by detecting an immediately succeeding spoken number from the current playback position.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the spoken number includes a plurality of spoken digits, and wherein the program is configured to detect the position of the spoken number by detecting a start position of a leading digit in the plurality of spoken digits.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the program is configured to determine the playback start position by setting the playback start position to a position earlier than the position of the spoken number.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the program is further configured to receive user input to find a previous number from a current playback position in the voice message, and wherein the program is configured to detect the position of the spoken number by detecting an immediately preceding spoken number from the current playback position.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the program is further configured to display at least a portion of the textual representation to a user.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the program is further configured to automatically dial the spoken number.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the program is configured to automatically dial the spoken number in response to user input.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the program is configured to detect whether the spoken number is a telephone number.

9. A program product, comprising:

a program configured to perform voice recognition on at least a portion of a voice message to generate a textual representation of the voice message, the program further configured to detect a position of a spoken number in the textual representation of the voice message, to determine a playback start position based upon the position of the spoken number, to detect whether the spoken number is a telephone number, and to play the voice message starting at the playback start position; and

a physical computer readable medium storing the program.

10. The program product of claim 9, wherein the computer readable medium includes a recordable medium.