Vocabulary Dictionary Recompile for In-Vehicle Audio System

• US 20110131037A1
• Filed: 11/20/2010
• Published: 06/02/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/01/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda Motor Company)
• Inventors: Kirsch, David M., Huang, Ritchie, Yamamoto, Stuart M.
• Granted Patent: US 9,045,098 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/10
• CPC Class Codes: B60R 16/0373 Voice control in general G10L
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/065 Adaptation
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue

Abstract

An in-vehicle audio system and methods are provided. A respective word or a respective phrase may be associated with each item of audio content stored in the in-vehicle audio system. The in-vehicle audio system may perform an action with respect to one of the stored items of audio content in response to a spoken command, which may include the respective word or the respective phrase associated with the one of the stored items. When audio content is to be added to the in-vehicle audio system, phonetics related to the audio content may be generated and added to a vocabulary dictionary during a compile process. When stored audio content is to be deleted from the in-vehicle audio system, phonetics related to the stored audio content to be deleted may be eliminated from the vocabulary dictionary during the compile process, which, in some embodiments, may be performed during a shutdown process.

Claims

1. A method, implemented in an in-vehicle audio system, for compiling a vocabulary dictionary for speech recognition, the method comprising:

receiving a command to add content to a storage device of the in-vehicle audio system, each item of the content having a word or a phrase associated therewith; and

compiling the vocabulary dictionary to add phonetics corresponding to the word or the phrase associated with each item of the content to be added while the content is being added to the storage device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein when adding a plurality of items to the content from a medium, the compiling of the vocabulary dictionary completes before the plurality of items are completely added to the storage device.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a command to delete from the content of the storage device; and

compiling, during a shutdown process, the vocabulary dictionary to delete phonetics corresponding to a word or a phrase associated with each item of the content to be deleted from the storage device in response to the receiving of the command to delete from the content of the storage device.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the shutdown process is initiated when an ignition off event is detected.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a command to delete from the content of the storage device; and

compiling at least a portion of the vocabulary dictionary to delete phonetics corresponding to a word or a phrase associated with each item of the content to be deleted from the storage device in response to the receiving of the command to delete from the content of the storage device.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the content includes music and the word or the phrase related to the content includes a title of an item of the music.

7. An in-vehicle audio system having a speech recognition feature, the in-vehicle audio system comprising:

a storage device for storing audio content, each item of the audio content having a respective word or a respective phrase associated therewith;

a microphone for receiving voice input;

a speech recognition component for recognizing spoken words of the received voice input, the speech recognition component including a vocabulary dictionary for use in recognizing spoken commands in the received voice input; and

a compiler for compiling the vocabulary dictionary while new audio content is being added to the storage device such that phonetics corresponding to a respective word or a respective phrase associated with each added item of the new audio content is included in the vocabulary dictionary as a result of the compiling.

8. The in-vehicle audio system of claim 7, wherein the compiler completes the compiling of the vocabulary dictionary before the new audio content is completely added to the storage device.

9. The in-vehicle audio system of claim 7, wherein in response to receiving a command to delete one or more items of audio content from the storage device, the compiler updates the vocabulary dictionary by compiling at least a portion of the vocabulary dictionary.

10. The in-vehicle audio system of claim 9, wherein the compiler compiles at least the portion of the vocabulary dictionary during a shutdown process.

11. The in-vehicle audio system of claim 10, wherein:

the shutdown process begins when an ignition off event is detected, and

the shutdown process completes after the compiling completes.

12. The in-vehicle audio system of claim 7, wherein:

the audio content includes items of music, and

the respective word or the respective phrase associated with a respective item of music is a title of the respective item of music.

13. The in-vehicle audio system of claim 7, further comprising:

an optical medium reader for reading the new audio content from an optical medium and for adding the new audio content to the audio content of the storage device.

14. A tangible machine-readable storage medium having instructions recorded therein for at least one processor of an in-vehicle audio system, execution of the instructions by the at least one processor causing the in-vehicle audio system to perform a method comprising:

receiving a command to either add one or more items of audio content to a medium of a storage device of the in-vehicle audio system or to delete one or more items of the audio content stored on the medium of the storage device, each item of the audio content having a word or a phrase associated therewith; and

compiling at least a portion of a vocabulary dictionary to update the vocabulary dictionary by adding, to the vocabulary dictionary, phonetics corresponding to at least one word or at least one phrase associated with the one or more items of audio content to be added, or by deleting, from the vocabulary dictionary, phonetics corresponding to at least one word or at least one phrase associated with the one or more items of audio content to be deleted from the storage device, the vocabulary dictionary being arranged as a plurality of portions, each of the plurality of portions being capable of compiling separately.

15. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein when the received command is a command to add one or more items of audio content to the medium of the storage device, the compiling is performed while the one or more items of audio content are being added to the medium of the storage device.

16. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein when the received command is a command to delete one or more items of audio content from the medium of the storage device, the compiling is performed during a shutdown process of the in-vehicle audio system.

17. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the shutdown process of the in-vehicle audio system begins upon detection of an occurrence of an ignition off event.

18. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein when the received command includes a first command to add one or more items of audio content to the medium of the storage device and a second command to delete one or more items of audio content from the medium of the storage device, the compiling is to be performed while the one or more items of audio content are being added to the medium of the storage device.

19. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein:

the audio content stored on the medium of the storage device includes music, and

the word or the phrase associated with each item of the music is a respective title.

20. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein when the received command includes a command to add one or more items of audio content to the medium of the storage device, the method further comprises:

copying the one or more items of audio content from a second medium to the medium of the storage device.