Speech control of multiple applications using applets
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A processor comprising:
- an input for receiving spoken commands;
an operating system having an arbitrator;
one or more applications each having a search applet, the one or more applications under the control of the operating system and modularly separate from the operating system;
one or more vocabularies that may be called by the search applet, each of the one or more vocabularies having commands pertinent to one of each said applications; and
one or more language models that may be called by the search applet, each of the one or more language models having language constraints pertinent to one of each said applications;
the operating system comprising a speech recognizer for recognizing spoken commands and, based on the data found in the vocabularies and language models, obtaining a confidence level for recognition to enable the one or more applications to automatically present to the arbitrator recognition information indicative of the voice recognizer'"'"'s ability to recognize the spoken commands, the arbitrator determining based on the confidence level which of the at least one or more applications is to respond to the spoken commands and permitting the determined application to act on the spoken command and instructing the remaining applications to ignore the spoken command the arbitrator further adapted to direct commands to one of the one or more applications based on whether the one application is in the foreground or in the background.
4 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A computer operating system (30) receives information from first and second application programs relating to control words for controlling the application programs. This information is contained in vocabulary A (74) and vocabulary B (76). The speech recognition tool (36) is arranged to accept the information from the first and second application programs and perform a comparison with digitized speech received at an input (60). A selected one of the application programs (32 and 34) is controlled according to the digitized speech received.
640 Citations
14 Claims
-
1. A processor comprising:
-
an input for receiving spoken commands;
an operating system having an arbitrator;
one or more applications each having a search applet, the one or more applications under the control of the operating system and modularly separate from the operating system;
one or more vocabularies that may be called by the search applet, each of the one or more vocabularies having commands pertinent to one of each said applications; and
one or more language models that may be called by the search applet, each of the one or more language models having language constraints pertinent to one of each said applications;
the operating system comprising a speech recognizer for recognizing spoken commands and, based on the data found in the vocabularies and language models, obtaining a confidence level for recognition to enable the one or more applications to automatically present to the arbitrator recognition information indicative of the voice recognizer'"'"'s ability to recognize the spoken commands, the arbitrator determining based on the confidence level which of the at least one or more applications is to respond to the spoken commands and permitting the determined application to act on the spoken command and instructing the remaining applications to ignore the spoken command the arbitrator further adapted to direct commands to one of the one or more applications based on whether the one application is in the foreground or in the background.
-
-
2. A method of operation of a computer having an operating system and at least one application program, comprising:
-
entering spoken commands;
providing a search application associated with each application program;
providing one or more vocabularies that may be called by the search application, each of the one or more vocabularies having commands pertinent to one of each said applications;
providing one or more language models that may be called by the search applet, each of the one or more language models having language constraints pertinent to one of each said applications;
repeatedly comparing the spoken commands entered with representations of the spoken commands associated with the application program to provide recognition results and to obtain a confidence level for the recognition results;
providing the recognition results to the operating system;
determining which application is in the foreground and which is in the background; and
selectively permitting, based on the application program that obtained the highest confidence level for the recognition result and also based on whether the application program is in the foreground or background, the application pogram to act on the spoken commands and instructing the remaining applications to ignore the voice commands. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
-
-
10. A data storage medium comprising instructions and data which, when loaded onto a general purpose processor, cause the processor to comprise:
-
an input for receiving digitized speech;
a phoneme generator for generating phoneme identification information;
an interface for interfacing with first and second application programs; and
an arbitrator;
wherein the interface is arranged to deliver the phoneme identification information to the first and second applications and to automatically deliver recognition information from the first and second application programs to the arbitrator, the recognition information being ranked according to both a predetermined confidence level and whether the application is in the foreground or the background and wherein the arbitrator is arranged to arbitrate between the first and second application programs based on the recognition information and to control a selected one of the first and second application programs according to the digitized speech received, the arbitrator enabling the application having the higher confidence level to be executed and to instruct the remaining application to ignore the digitized speech. - View Dependent Claims (11)
-
-
12. A method of installing an application program in a computer comprising:
-
registering the application program with an operating system;
extracting from the application program selected commands and their phonetic representations; and
automatically delivering the commands and phonetic representations to a vocabulary of a search engine.
-
-
13. A method of operation of a computer comprising:
-
invoking a first recognizer associated with a first application that is not yet invoked;
invoking a second recognizer associated with a second application that is not yet invoked;
receiving a spoken command;
performing recognition of the spoken command in the first and second recognizers to automatically provide first and second recognition results;
arbitrating between the first and second recognition results; and
invoking one of the first and second applications dependent on the step of arbitrating and instructing a second of the first and second applications to ignore the spoken command. - View Dependent Claims (14)
-
Specification