SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RESPONDING TO NATURAL LANGUAGE SPEECH UTTERANCE

• US 20100204994A1
• Filed: 04/22/2010
• Published: 08/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/03/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dialect, LLC
• Original Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Kennewick, Michael R. JR., Kennewick, Michael R. SR., Kennewick, Robert A., Locke, David, Kennewick, Richard, Freeman, Tom
• Granted Patent: US 8,112,275 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/257
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/228 of application context
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

Systems and methods for receiving natural language queries and/or commands and execute the queries and/or commands. The systems and methods overcome the deficiencies of prior art speech query and response systems through the application of a complete speech-based information query, retrieval, presentation and command environment. This environment makes significant use of context, prior information, domain knowledge, and user specific profile data to achieve a natural environment for one or more users making queries or commands in multiple domains. Through this integrated approach, a complete speech-based natural language query and response environment can be created. The systems and methods creates, stores and uses extensive personal profile information for each user, thereby improving the reliability of determining the context and presenting the expected results for a particular question or command.

Claims

1. A method for recognizing natural language speech utterances, comprising:

receiving a natural language speech utterance from a user;

determining an identity of the user by comparing voice characteristics of the received utterance to one or more user profiles;

recognizing one or more words or phrases contained in the received utterance using at least one dictionary and phrase table, wherein the at least one dictionary and phrase table includes a plurality of entries associated with a dynamic set of prior probabilities or fuzzy possibilities;

updating the dynamic set of prior probabilities or fuzzy possibilities based on a confidence level for the recognized words or phrases;

requesting, based on the confidence level for the recognized words or phrases, a phonetic alphabet spelling for unrecognized or out-of-vocabulary words or phrases in the received utterance, the phonetic alphabet spelling provided by the user in one or more subsequent natural language utterances; and

associating the identity of the user with a recognition of the received natural language utterance, wherein the recognition includes the recognized words or phrases, and further includes the phonetic alphabet spelling for the unrecognized or out-of-vocabulary words or phrases.