Search Aided Voice Recognition

• US 20090228277A1
• Filed: 03/10/2008
• Published: 09/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/10/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Bonforte, Jeffrey, Clayton, Gary, Chen, Victor
• Granted Patent: US 8,380,512 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/246
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/632 Query formulation
• 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

Abstract

A method and apparatus for incorporating voice recognition into a search engine is provided. The phonetic voice recognition system lacking grammar and spell checking is used. The output of the phonetic voice recognition system is forwarded to a search engine. The search engine performs disambiguation and relevancy analysis based on past similar queries. Search engine user behavior is recorded to improve the accuracy. Recorded statistics are used to rank results pages.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for navigation using search engine and phonetic voice recognition comprising the steps of:

receiving an audio input;

transforming the audio input into a string;

submitting the string to a search engine; and

generating a set of query results based, in part, on the string and on past strings submitted to the search engine.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of transforming the audio input into a string is performed by a phonetic voice recognition component.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of transforming the audio input into a string includes a step of disambiguating the string.

4. The method of claim 1 including a further step of recording one or more addresses of pages visited by a user, wherein each page was provided to the user in one or more previous search results.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the set of query results is ordered, at least in part, using the recorded addresses.

6. The method of claim 1 including a further step of prompting a user for an indication of which query result of the set of query results is a best result.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the step of prompting the user includes:

transforming a part of a selected result, from the set of results, from text to speech; and

sending an audio prompt to the user, wherein the audio prompt includes audio that corresponds to the part of the selected result.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the set of query results is ordered based, at least in part, on past strings recorded by the search engine.

9. A computer-readable storage medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions, wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions by one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform the steps of:

receiving an audio input;

transforming the audio input into a string;

submitting the string to a search engine; and

generating a set of query results based, in part, on the string and on past strings submitted to the search engine.

10. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein transforming the audio input into a string is performed by a phonetic voice recognition component.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein transforming the audio input into a string includes a step of disambiguating the string.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions by the one or more processors causes the one or more processors to further perform the step of:

recording one or more addresses of pages visited by a user, wherein each page was provided to the user in one or more previous search results.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, wherein the set of query results are ordered, at least in part, using the recorded addresses.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions by the one or more processors causes the one or more processors to further perform the step of:

prompting a user for an indication of which query result of the set of query results is a best result.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein prompting the user includes:

transforming a part of a selected result, from the set of results, from text to speech; and

sending an audio prompt to the user, wherein the audio prompt includes audio that corresponds to the part of the selected result.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein the set of query results is ordered based, at least in part, on past strings recorded by the search engine.