Method for voice recognition

• US 20070124057A1
• Filed: 11/30/2005
• Published: 05/31/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Audi AG (Volkswagen AG), Volkswagen Of America (Volkswagen AG)
• Original Assignee: Audi AG (Volkswagen AG), Volkswagen Of America (Volkswagen AG)
• Inventors: Bergmann, Carsten, Prieto, Ramon, Gruchalski, Gerd, Lathrop, William, Mohrle, Markus, Imam, M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,751,145 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/200
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/025 Phonemes, fenemes or fenones being the recognition units
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/085 Methods for reducing search complexity, pruning
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/088 Word spotting

Abstract

A voice recognition method that is used for finding a street uses a database including information about a plurality of streets. The streets are characterized by respective street names and street types. A user provides a voice input for the street that the user tries to find. The voice input includes a street name and a street type. The street type is recognized by processing the voice input. Streets having the recognized street type are then selected from the database and a street name of at least one of the streets selected from the database is recognized by processing the voice input.

Claims

1. A method for voice recognition, comprising:

providing a database including information for a plurality of streets, the streets being characterized by respective street names and street types;

providing a voice input including a street name information and a street type information;

recognizing a given street type by processing the voice input;

selecting streets having the given street type from the database; and

recognizing a street name of at least one of the streets selected from the database by processing the voice input.

2. The method according to claim 1, which comprises:

calculating a current location of a vehicle;

selecting streets within a given distance from the vehicle; and

recognizing a street type and a street name of only the streets within the given distance from the vehicle.

3. The method according to claim 1, which comprises:

performing a phoneme recognition on the voice input and selecting at least one phoneme recognized with a given confidence level; and

recognizing the street name by matching the at least one phoneme recognized with the given confidence level to phonemes characterizing the streets stored in the database.

4. The method according to claim 1, which comprises:

performing a phoneme recognition on the voice input and selecting at least one phoneme recognized with a given confidence level;

recognizing a number of street names by matching the at least one phoneme recognized with the given confidence level to phonemes characterizing the streets stored in the database; and

outputting the recognized streets such that a user can select one of the recognized streets.

5. The method according to claim 1, which comprises recognizing the street type prior to recognizing the street name.

6. The method according to claim 1, which comprises storing the voice input as a data file and recognizing the street type and the street name by processing the data file.

7. The method according to claim 1, which comprises recognizing the street type and the street name without requiring a voice input for information about a city.

8. The method according to claim 1, which comprises:

performing a phoneme recognition on each segment of a speech waveform, the speech waveform representing the voice input; and

selecting streets having at least one phoneme recognized with a given confidence level.

9. A method for finding information in a database, comprising:

storing street information in a database, the street information including a street name and a street type for each of a plurality of streets;

eliminating streets from the database that are remote from a given location;

recognizing a given street type by processing a voice input;

eliminating streets from the database that have a street type different from the given street type; and

subsequently recognizing a street name by matching at least one phoneme recognized in the voice input to at least one phoneme characterizing respective streets that have not been eliminated from the database.