Personal home voice portal

• US 20050100142A1
• Filed: 11/10/2003
• Published: 05/12/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 11/10/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Patel, Anilkumar B., Mansey, Pradeep P., Gandhi, Shailesh B.
• Granted Patent: US 8,233,592 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/88.10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/02 Banking, e.g. interest calculation or account maintenance credit or loans G06Q40/03
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0861 using biometrical features, e.g. fingerprint, retina-scan cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication using biological data H04L9/3231
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/40 using speech recognition speech recognition per se G10L15/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4938 comprising a voice browser which renders and interprets, e.g. VoiceXML
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/06 Authentication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/12 Messaging; Mailboxes; Announcements

Abstract

A method of accessing voice services through a personal computing system can include receiving, in the personal computing system, a telephone call from a user registered with the personal computing system, wherein the user is remotely located from the personal computing system, receiving a user spoken utterance over the telephone call, and speech recognizing the user spoken utterance to determine a request for a voice service. The method further can include formatting an electronic message according to the request for a voice service and sending the electronic message over a communications network to a remote computing system in accordance with the request for a voice service. Also, the method can include processing and formatting a response received from the remote computing system and playing back audio to the user over the telephone call.

Claims

1. A method of accessing voice services through a personal computing system comprising the steps of:

receiving, in the personal computing system, a telephone call from a user registered with the personal computing system, wherein the user is remotely located from the personal computing system;

receiving a user spoken utterance over the telephone call;

speech recognizing the user spoken utterance to determine a request for a voice service;

formatting an electronic message according to the request for a voice service; and

sending the electronic message over a communications network to a remote computing system in accordance with the request for a voice service.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the request is a request for content from a remote computing system, said formatting step comprising building an electronic message to be sent over the Internet.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising the steps of:

receiving content in the personal computing system from the remote computing system;

converting the content to speech audio in the personal computing system; and

playing the audio to the user over the telephone call.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the request is a request to send an electronic mail, said method further comprising the steps of:

receiving at least one additional user spoken utterance; and

converting the at least one additional user spoken utterance to text, wherein said formatting step builds an electronic mail to be sent in said sending step and includes the speech recognized text in the electronic mail.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the request is a request to send an instant message, said method further comprising the steps of:

receiving at least one additional user spoken utterance; and

converting the at least one additional user spoken utterance to text, wherein said formatting step builds an instant message to be sent in said sending step and includes the speech recognized text in the instant message.

6. A system for accessing voice services through a personal computing system comprising:

an interface for receiving telephone calls within the personal computing system;

a speech recognition system disposed within the personal computing system for converting user utterances received over established telephone calls to text; and

a service engine configured to receive speech recognized text from said speech recognition system, identify user requests from the text, generate messages according to the user requests, and send the messages to at least one remote computing system via a communications network.

7. The system of claim 6, further comprising a text-to-speech engine disposed within the personal computing system for converting received text to speech to be played over established telephone calls, wherein said service engine receives content responsive to the sent messages and provides the content to the text-to-speech engine to be rendered as speech.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein said service engine comprises an electronic mail interface configured to generate messages according to user requests, wherein the messages are electronic mail messages.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein said service engine comprises an instant messaging client configured to generate messages according to user requests, wherein the messages are instant messages.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein said service engine interacts with a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Interface configured to format user requests for transmission over the Internet.

11. A system for accessing voice services through a personal computing system comprising:

means for receiving, in the personal computing system, a telephone call from a user registered with the personal computing system, wherein the user is remotely located from the personal computing system;

means for receiving a user spoken utterance over the telephone call;

means for speech recognizing the user spoken utterance to determine a request for a voice service;

means for formatting an electronic message according to the request for a voice service; and

means for sending the electronic message over a communications network to a remote computing system in accordance with the request for a voice service.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the request is a request for content from a remote computing system, wherein said means for formatting build an electronic message to be sent over the Internet.

13. The system of claim 12, further comprising:

means for receiving content in the personal computing system from the remote computing system;

means for converting the content to speech audio in the personal computing system; and

means for playing the audio to the user over the telephone call.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the request is a request to send an electronic mail, said system further comprising:

means for receiving at least one additional user spoken utterance; and

means for converting the at least one additional user spoken utterance to text, wherein said means for formatting builds an electronic mail to be sent and includes the speech recognized text in the electronic mail.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the request is a request to send an instant message, said system further comprising:

means for receiving at least one additional user spoken utterance; and

means for converting the at least one additional user spoken utterance to text, wherein said formatting step builds an instant message to be sent in said sending step and includes the speech recognized text in the instant message.

16. A machine readable storage, having stored thereon a computer program having a plurality of code sections executable by a machine for causing the machine to perform the steps of:

receiving, in the personal computing system, a telephone call from a user registered with the personal computing system, wherein the user is remotely located from the personal computing system;

receiving a user spoken utterance over the telephone call;

speech recognizing the user spoken utterance to determine a request for a voice service;

formatting an electronic message according to the request for a voice service; and

sending the electronic message over a communications network to a remote computing system in accordance with the request for a voice service.

17. The machine readable storage of claim 16, wherein the request is a request for content from a remote computing system, said formatting step comprising building an electronic message to be sent over the Internet.

18. The machine readable storage of claim 17, further causing the machine to perform the steps of:

receiving content in the personal computing system from the remote computing system;

converting the content to speech audio in the personal computing system; and

playing the audio to the user over the telephone call.

19. The machine readable storage of claim 16, wherein the request is a request to send an electronic mail, said machine readable storage further causing the machine to perform the steps of:

receiving at least one additional user spoken utterance; and

converting the at least one additional user spoken utterance to text, wherein said formatting step builds an electronic mail to be sent in said sending step and includes the speech recognized text in the electronic mail.

20. The machine readable storage of claim 16, wherein the request is a request to send an instant message, said machine readable storage further causing the machine to perform the steps of:

receiving at least one additional user spoken utterance; and

converting the at least one additional user spoken utterance to text, wherein said formatting step builds an instant message to be sent in said sending step and includes the speech recognized text in the instant message.