System and method for updating information in electronic calendars

• US 8,868,427 B2
• Filed: 06/10/2010
• Issued: 10/21/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/11/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Motors LLC (General Motors Company)
• Original Assignee: General Motors LLC (General Motors Company)
• Inventors: Rysenga, Jeffrey P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Shah, Paras D
• Assistant Examiner(s): Sharma, Neeraj
• Application Number:
  US12/797,661
• Publication Number:
  US 20110144980A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,594 Days
• Field of Search: 704/201, 704/260, 704/275, 704/270, 704/254, 701/408, 701/35, 701/532, 701/31.4, 379/88.16, 379/88.13, 379/88.18, 379/201.12, 379/93.23, 379/88.11, 379/88.19, 379/211.02, 379/201.06, 719/328, 340/995.27, 340/521, 340/540, 455/412.1, 455/563, 370/352, 707/3, 709/203
• US Class Current: 704/275
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence

Abstract

Systems and methods for updating electronic calendar information. Speech is received from a user at a vehicle telematics unit (VTU), wherein the speech is representative of information related to a particular vehicle trip. The received speech is recorded in the VTU as a voice memo, and data associated with the voice memo is communicated from the VTU to a computer running a calendaring application. The data is associated with a field of the calendaring application, and stored in association with the calendaring application field.

Claims

1. A method of updating electronic calendar information, comprising the steps of:

providing at least one server that is remotely located with respect to a vehicle having a vehicle telematics unit (VTU), the at least one server being in communication with a vehicle call center equipped to provide back-end services to the vehicle, wherein the at least one server stores instructions for an internet-enabled calendaring application comprising a plurality of electronic calendars, each electronic calendar having data fields associated with one or more of;

user appointments, user contacts, user business information, and user personal information;

receiving at the VTU, from a first user located in the vehicle, speech representative of information related to a particular vehicle trip, wherein the first user is a subscriber to the internet-enabled calendaring application having access to a first electronic calendar;

recording the received speech in the VTU as a voice memo;

converting the voice memo to converted-text data using speech recognition, wherein the converting step occurs at the vehicle prior to the transmitting step or at the call center after the transmitting step; and

transmitting one of with the voice memo or the converted-text data from the VTU using cellular communication to the at least one server;

associating without human interaction the converted-text data with one or more data fields in the first electronic calendar, wherein the associating step includes;

identifying which of the one or more data fields to modify based at least partially on;

(a) a time and date stamp of the voice memo; and

(b) the converted-text data;

based on the identifying step, determining which of the one or more data fields of the first electronic calendar should be updated;

storing the converted-text data in at least one of the one or more data fields; and

providing internet access to the first electronic calendar to a second user, wherein the second user also has internet access to other electronic calendars associated with different users.

2. A method as defined in claim 1, further comprising:

providing an indication of the presence of the converted-text data in the calendaring application field of the first electronic calendar.

3. A method as defined in claim 2, wherein the indication includes a visible indicator.

4. A method as defined in claim 3, wherein the calendaring application data field is a calendar date and the visible indicator is a graphical icon displayed in the calendar date field and linked to an audio file associated with the voice memo.

5. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the association of the converted-text data with the data field of the first electronic calendar is carried out based on at least one horologic parameter associated with the recording step.

6. A method as defined in claim 5, wherein the calendaring application identifies a date associated with the voice memo, and then associates the date with a corresponding date field of the first electronic calendar.

7. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the information includes an indication of whether the particular vehicle trip was a business or personal vehicle trip.

8. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the information includes an indication of an attribute of the particular vehicle trip including at least one of a personal contact, a business contact, an appointment topic, an event topic, meeting information, sales information, product information, or personal information.

9. A method as defined in claim 1, further comprising the step of converting the voice memo to converted-text data via a speech-to-text unit in operative communication with the in-vehicle telematics unit, wherein the converted-text data is transmitted a vehicle data upload.

10. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the data includes at least one of an audio file of the voice memo, header data in an audio file of the voice memo, a log file associated with an audio file, a speech-to-text data file created from the voice memo.

11. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the association of the converted-text data with the data field of the first electronic calendar is carried out by comparing content of the voice memo with content of data stored in association with the first electronic calendar.

12. A method as defined in claim 11, wherein the content includes a contact name in the voice memo with a name stored in a contact field in the first electronic calendar.

13. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions executable by a vehicle telematics system to cause the system to perform a method according to claim 1.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving at the call center an indication from the second user that the first user and the other, different users may receive information from the call center on their respective electronic calendars.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the second user is a fleet manager, wherein the first user and the other, different users are fleet users.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing to the first user and the other, different users access to their respective electronic calendars, wherein the access is via a computer or electronic device capable of supporting and running the internet-enabled calendaring application.

14. A vehicle telematics system comprising:

a microphone in a vehicle to receive user speech representative of information related to a particular vehicle trip;

a recorder in the vehicle to record the user speech as a voice memo;

a telematics unit (VTU) in the vehicle in communication with the recorder to transmit data associated with the voice memo from the VTU; and

a computer server remotely located from the vehicle in cellular communication with the VTU configured to receive the transmitted data from the VTU; and

at least one of a vehicle speech-to-text converter in selective communication with the VTU to convert the voice memo to converted-text data or a call center speech-to-text converter in selective communication with the VTU to convert the voice memo to converted-text data, wherein the transmitted data includes the voice memo, the converted-text data, or both,

wherein the computer server hosts a calendaring application that comprises a plurality of electronic calendars which are associated with different vehicle users one of the plurality of electronic calendars being a first electronic calendar associated with the telematics unit and a first user thereof, wherein the calendaring application performs the following steps;

receiving the voice memo, the converted-text data, or both;

if the voice memo was not previously converted to text data by the vehicle speech-to-text converter, converting the voice memo to converted-text data using the call center speech-to-text converter; and

associating without human interaction the converted-text data with one or more data fields in the first electronic calendar, wherein the associating step includes;

identifying which of the one or more data fields to modify based at least partially on;

(a) a time and date stamp of the voice memo; and

(b) the converted-text data;

based on the identifying step, determining which of the one or more data fields of the first electronic calendar should be updated; and

storing the converted-text data in at least one of the one or more data fields; and

providing internet access to the first electronic calendar to a second user, wherein the second user also has internet access to other electronic calendars associated with different users.

15. A method of updating electronic calendar information, comprising the steps of:

(a) performing steps (a1)-(a6) for a first user of a first fleet vehicle;

(a1) receiving, from a user at a vehicle telematics unit (VTU), speech representative of information related to a particular vehicle trip;

(a2) recording the received speech at the VTU as voice memo data;

(a3) converting the voice memo data to converted-text data using speech recognition, wherein the converting step occurs at the vehicle prior to the step (a4) or at a computer server after the step (a4);

(a4) receiving via cellular communication the voice memo data, the converted-text data, or both and at least one identifier associated with the first user at a computer server running a calendaring application remotely-located from the VTU;

(a5) automatically associating at the computer server the voice memo data, the converted-text data, or both with a field of the calendaring application, wherein the automatically associating step comprises;

identifying which of one or more data fields in a first electronic calendar associated with the first user to modify based at least partially on;

(a) a time and date stamp of the voice memo; and

(b) the converted-text data, wherein the one or more data fields include;

user appointments, user contacts, user business information, and user personal information; and

based on the identifying step, determining which of the one or more data fields of the first electronic calendar should be updated; and

(a6) storing at the computer server the converted-text data in association with the calendaring application field; and

(b) repeating step (a) for additional users of the first fleet vehicle and other fleet vehicles, wherein each of the additional users have at least one different identifier.