Establishing a Multimodal Personality for a Multimodal Application in Dependence Upon Attributes of User Interaction

• US 20080065387A1
• Filed: 09/11/2006
• Published: 03/13/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/11/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Pike, Hilary A., Cross, Charles W. Jr.
• Granted Patent: US 8,374,874 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/270
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 17/00 Speaker identification or verification techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4936 Speech interaction details speech recognition per se G10L15/00

Abstract

Establishing a multimodal personality for a multimodal application, including evaluating, by the multimodal application, attributes of a user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application; selecting, by the multimodal application, a vocal demeanor in dependence upon the values of the attributes of the user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application; and incorporating, by the multimodal application, the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application.

Claims

1. A method of establishing a multimodal personality for a multimodal application, the method comprising;

evaluating, by the multimodal application, attributes of a user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application;

selecting, by the multimodal application, a vocal demeanor in dependence upon the values of the attributes of the user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application; and

incorporating, by the multimodal application, the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise user response rate as measured by the time elapsed between presentation of a prompt and a user'"'"'s response to the prompt.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise interaction mode.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise attributes of user speech.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein attributes of user speech further comprise speech rate, voice family, pitch, pitch range, and richness.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein incorporating the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application further comprises linking at least one markup element of a markup document of the multimodal application to a style of a cascading style sheet.

7. Apparatus for establishing a multimodal personality for a multimodal application, the apparatus comprising a computer processor and a computer memory operatively coupled to the computer processor, the computer memory having disposed within it computer program instructions capable of:

evaluating, by the multimodal application, attributes of a user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application;

selecting, by the multimodal application, a vocal demeanor in dependence upon the values of the attributes of the user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application; and

incorporating, by the multimodal application, the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application.

8. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise user response rate as measured by the time elapsed between presentation of a prompt and a user'"'"'s response to the prompt.

9. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise interaction mode.

10. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise attributes of user speech.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein attributes of user speech further comprise speech rate, voice family, pitch, pitch range, and richness.

12. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein incorporating the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application further comprises linking at least one markup element of a markup document of the multimodal application to a style of a cascading style sheet.

13. A computer program product for establishing a multimodal personality for a multimodal application, the computer program product disposed upon a signal bearing medium, the computer program product comprising computer program instructions capable of:

evaluating, by the multimodal application, attributes of a user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application;

selecting, by the multimodal application, a vocal demeanor in dependence upon the values of the attributes of the user'"'"'s interaction with the multimodal application; and

incorporating, by the multimodal application, the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application.

14. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the signal bearing medium comprises a recordable medium.

15. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the signal bearing medium comprises a transmission medium.

16. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise user response rate as measured by the time elapsed between presentation of a prompt and a user'"'"'s response to the prompt.

17. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise interaction mode.

18. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein attributes of user interaction further comprise attributes of user speech.

19. The computer program product of claim 18 wherein attributes of user speech further comprise speech rate, voice family, pitch, pitch range, and richness.

20. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein incorporating the vocal demeanor into the multimodal application further comprises linking at least one markup element of a markup document of the multimodal application to a style of a cascading style sheet.