Techniques to provide a standard interface to a speech recognition platform

• US 9,818,408 B2
• Filed: 12/19/2016
• Issued: 11/14/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Chambers, Robert L., Bodell, Michael, Luong, Daphne, Wong, Annie, Gozali, Faustinus K., Ho, Andrew, Philander, Rod, Anderson, Corby
• Primary Examiner(s): Armstrong, Angela A
• Application Number:
  US15/384,019
• Publication Number:
  US 20170098450A1
• Time in Patent Office: 330 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/30 Distributed recognition, e.g. in client-server systems, for mobile phones or network applications
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/221 Announcement of recognition results

Abstract

Techniques and systems to provide speech recognition services over a network using a standard interface are described. In an embodiment, a technique includes accepting a speech recognition request that includes at least audio input, via an application program interface (API). The speech recognition request may also include additional parameters. The technique further includes performing speech recognition on the audio according to the request and any specified parameters; and returning a speech recognition result as a hypertext protocol (HTTP) response. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of an application program interface (API), comprising:

processing at least one parameter for performing speech recognition, the at least one parameter comprising a length of silence to observe;

accepting a speech recognition request comprising an audio input;

performing speech recognition on the audio input according to the at least one parameter; and

prior to performing speech recognition on all of the audio input and upon observing the length of silence in the audio input, returning a plurality of speech recognition results as hypertext protocol (HTTP) responses comprising a status attribute indicating an overall success or failure of speech recognition on the audio input.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the speech recognition request is formatted as at least one of:

an HTTP query string;

an HTTP POST entity body; and

at least one HTTP POST entity body part.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the speech recognition request comprises parameters including at least one of:

an in-line grammar;

an in-line audio input;

a URI link to an audio input;

a timeout;

a finalize timeout;

a confidence level;

a sensitivity level;

a speed level;

an accuracy level;

a speaker parameter; and

a recognizer specific parameter.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the request is an inline streaming request and the audio input is in a raw format.

5. The method of claim 1, comprising returning the speech recognition results as a streamed result.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the request is a streamed request.

7. An apparatus, comprising:

at least one processing unit; and

a speech recognition service, executed on the at least one processing unit, implementing an application program interface (API) operative to accept a speech recognition request comprising an audio input and parameters for performing speech recognition on the audio input, and prior to performing speech recognition on all of the audio input, returning a plurality of speech recognition results as hypertext protocol (HTTP) responses comprising a status attribute indicating an overall success or failure of speech recognition on the audio input.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the API comprises a wrapper for building a speech recognition request.

9. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the speech recognition service is operative to perform at least one of:

receive the speech recognition request as a streamed request; and

return the recognition results as a streamed result.

10. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the speech recognition request comprises at least one of:

an in-line grammar;

an in-line audio input;

a URI link to an audio input;

a timeout;

a finalize timeout;

a confidence level;

a sensitivity level;

a speed level;

an accuracy level;

a speaker parameter; and

a recognizer specific parameter.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein at least one of the in-line grammar or the grammar referred to by a URI link that includes a reference to another grammar.

12. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the speech recognition request is a streamed speech recognition request.

13. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the speech recognition service further operative to return the plurality of speech recognition results upon observing a length of silence in the audio input.

14. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the speech recognition service further operative to convert a first portion of the audio input to a first recognition result associated with the speech recognition request, to return the first recognition result after silence is observed for a specified duration of the audio input, to convert a second portion of the audio input to a second recognition result associated with the speech recognition request, and to return the second recognition result, wherein the first and second recognition results are returned as a hypertext protocol (HTTP) responses comprising a status flag indicating an overall success or failure of the recognition result.

15. A mobile computing device, comprising:

at least one processing unit; and

a component, executed on the at least one processing unit, operative to communicate a speech recognition request comprising audio input and speech recognition parameters including a length of silence to observe and receiving a plurality of speech recognition results returned as hypertext protocol (HTTP) responses comprising a status attribute indicating an overall success or failure of speech recognition on the audio input.

16. The device of claim 15, wherein the component further operative to receive the HTTP responses in an XML document.

17. The device of claim 15, wherein the speech recognition parameters comprises at least one of:

an in-line grammar;

an in-line audio input;

a URI link to an audio input;

a timeout;

a finalize timeout;

a confidence level;

a sensitivity level;

a speed level;

an accuracy level;

a speaker parameter; and

a recognizer specific parameter.

18. The device of claim 15, wherein the request as an inline streaming request and the audio input is in a raw format.

19. The device of claim 15, wherein the component further operative to process the received speech recognition results as a streamed result.

20. The device of claim 15, wherein the request comprises at least one of an HTTP query string;

an HTTP POST entity body; and

at least one HTTP POST entity body part.