Voice dialing method and apparatus for mobile phone

• US 8,798,237 B2
• Filed: 03/26/2008
• Issued: 08/05/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Inventors: Lee, Hyung Chul
• Primary Examiner(s): Tsang, Fan
• Assistant Examiner(s): Teshale, Akelaw
• Application Number:
  US12/055,788
• Publication Number:
  US 20080240377A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,323 Days
• Field of Search: 379 8801- 8804, 379/88.08, 379/88.11, 379/88.14, 379/93.15, 379/289
• US Class Current: 379/88.03
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/271 controlled by voice recognition
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/74 with voice recognition means voice activated dialling H04M1/271; voice recognition algorithms G10L15/00

Abstract

A voice dialing method and apparatus for simplifying voice dial is provided. The voice dialing method includes receiving a speech in a voice recognition mode, extracting characters from the speech, translating the characters into corresponding numerals, and dialing a phone number on the basis of the numerals.

Claims

1. A voice dialing method for a mobile phone comprising:

receiving a speech in a voice recognition mode;

decomposing a plurality of characters from the speech;

translating each decomposed character of the plurality of characters into a corresponding numeral;

displaying the corresponding numerals;

retrieving, if the numerals are a user-intended numeral sequence, at least one of phone numbers corresponding to the numeral sequence from a phonebook;

displaying the at least one of the retrieved phone numbers; and

dialing a specific phone number selected from the displayed at least one of the retrieved phone numbers.

2. The voice dialing method of claim 1, wherein the speech is a word or a sequence of words spoken by a user.

3. A voice dialing method for a mobile phone, comprising:

receiving a speech in a voice recognition mode;

searching for a word or a numeral sequence corresponding to the speech in a phonebook;

dialing, if the word or the numeral sequence is searched from the phonebook, a phone number corresponding to the word or the numeral sequence;

decomposing, if the word or the numeral sequence is not searched from the phonebook, a plurality of characters from the speech;

extracting a numeral corresponding to each character of the decomposed plurality of characters;

displaying the extracted numerals;

retrieving, if the extracted numerals are a user-intended sequence, at least one of phone numbers corresponding to the extracted numerals from the phonebook;

displaying the at least one of the retrieved phone numbers; and

dialing a specific phone number selected from the displayed at least one of the retrieved phone numbers.

4. The voice dialing method of claim 3, wherein the speech is a word or a sequence of words spoken by a user.

5. A voice recognition-enabled mobile phone comprising:

an audio processing unit for processing a speech input through a microphone;

a memory unit for storing a phonebook, a mapping table listing characters matched with numerals, and a voice dialing application; and

a control unit for decomposing a plurality of characters from the speech, translating each character of the plurality of decomposed characters into a corresponding numeral with reference to the mapping table, displaying the corresponding numerals, retrieving at least one of phone numbers corresponding to the corresponding numerals from a phonebook when the numerals are a user-intended numeral sequence, displaying the at least one of the retrieved phone numbers, and dialing a specific phone number selected from the displayed at least one of the retrieved phone numbers.

6. The voice recognition-enabled mobile phone of claim 5, wherein the control unit comprises:

a mode controller for selectively activating and deactivating voice dial modes according to a user request or preset configuration;

a voice recognizer for recognizing the speech and decomposing the speech into characters; and

a character translator for translating a sequence of the characters into a sequence of numerals.

7. The voice recognition-enabled mobile phone of claim 6, wherein the control unit further comprises a dialing processor for retrieving the at least one of the phone numbers on the basis of the sequence of numerals.

8. The voice recognition-enabled mobile phone of claim 7, wherein the dialing processor retrieves the at least one of the phone numbers including the sequence of numerals and dials the specific phone number in response to a user request.

9. The voice recognition-enabled mobile phone of claim 5, wherein the voice dialing application comprises:

a voice recognition module for recognizing the speech;

a voice dialing module for placing a call with the recognized speech;

a speech decomposition module for decomposing the speech into characters; and

a character-numeral translation module for translating the characters into corresponding numerals.

10. The voice recognition-enabled mobile phone of claim 5, further comprising a display unit for displaying the translated numerals.

11. The voice recognition-enabled mobile phone of claim 5, further comprising a radio frequency unit for transmitting a call request signal to a radio access network in accordance with dialing the specific phone number.