Routing queries based on carrier phrase registration

• US 8,239,206 B1
• Filed: 09/30/2011
• Issued: 08/07/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 08/06/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: LeBeau, Michael J., Jitkoff, John Nicholas, Bryne, William J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Abebe, Daniel D
• Application Number:
  US13/250,669
• Time in Patent Office: 312 Days
• Field of Search: 704/251, 704/275, 707/769, 707/771
• US Class Current: 704/275
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/08 Speech classification or search
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/223 Execution procedure of a spoken command
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/53 using third party service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/271 controlled by voice recognition
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/50 Service provisioning or reconfiguring
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/60 Subscription-based services using application servers or record carriers, e.g. SIM application toolkits

Abstract

In general, the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods, systems, and program products for receiving a voice query at a mobile computing device and generating data that represents content of the voice query. The data is provided to a server system. A textual query that has been determined by a speech recognizer at the server system to be a textual form of at least part of the data is received at the mobile computing device. The textual query is determined to include a carrier phrase of one or more words that is reserved by a first third-party application program installed on the computing device. The first third-party application is selected, from a group of one or more third-party applications, to receive all or a part of the textual query. All or a part of the textual query is provided to the selected first application program.

Claims

1. A computer program product tangibly embodied in a computer-readable storage medium and storing instructions that when executed by a processor perform operations, comprising:

receiving, by a computing device, an orally-provided voice query and generating data that represents content of the voice query;

providing the data by the computing device to a server system;

receiving, by the computing device and from the server system, a textual query that has been determined by a speech recognizer at the server system to be a textual form of at least part of the data;

determining that the textual query includes a carrier phrase of one or more words that is reserved by a first third-party application program installed on the computing device;

selecting the first third-party application, from a group of one or more third-party applications, to receive all or a part of the textual query; and

providing, by the computing device, all or a part of the textual query to the selected first application program.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the all or part of the textual query that is provided to the selected first application program excludes the carrier phrase.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the data represents an audio recording of the orally-provided voice query, and wherein the orally-provided voice query was received by the computing device in response to a user selection of a button that is provided by the computing device for submitting voice queries.

4. The computer program product of claim 3, wherein a content of the textual query includes words of a human-understandable language.

5. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise providing, by the computing device and to the first third-party application program, the carrier phrase.

6. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the all or a part of the textual query is provided to the first third-party application program so as to cause the first third-party application program to perform actions (i) that are defined by the first third-party application program and (ii) that are based on a content of the all or a part of the textual query.

7. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise determining that third-party application programs other than the first application program have not registered a carrier phrase that is included in the textual query,

wherein each of the third-party application programs other than the first application program is not provided the all or a part of the textual query.

8. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein each of the third-party application programs was installed on the computing device from an install file that was received at the computing device over a network, the install file for each third-party application program being received over the network in response to the computing device receiving user input that requests receipt of the install file over the network.

9. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving, by a server system, a textual query that is a textual form of a voice query that was orally provided to a computing device, the textual query being determined by a speech recognition system from data that represented an audio recording of the voice query;

determining, by the server system, that the textual query includes a carrier phrase of one or more words that is registered by a first third-party application program of a plurality of third-party application programs, each of the plurality of third-party application programs having registered one or more carrier phrases in response to a request by or on behalf of the respective third party application program to register the respective carrier phrases, wherein the plurality of third-party application programs includes third-party application programs that have been installed on the computing device or web application programs that the computing device has visited; and

providing, by the server system and for receipt by the first application program at the computing device, a remaining portion of the textual query, the remaining portion of the textual query being a portion of the textual query that does not include the carrier phrase.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, wherein determining that the textual query includes the carrier phrase that is registered by the first application program includes comparing a beginning portion of the textual query to the carrier phrases registered by each of the plurality of application programs.

11. A computer-implemented system comprising:

a computer-implemented speech recognizer that is configured to (i) receive data that represents a content of a voice query that was orally provided to a computing device, and (ii) generate a textual query that is a textual representation of the data;

a carrier phrase database that is programmed to (i) identify a plurality of third-party application programs that are provided by organizations that are different from an organization that provides the system, and (ii) identify a plurality of carrier phrases that have been assigned to respective of the third-party application programs in response to requests by the third-party application programs or providers of the third-party application programs to reserve the respective carrier phrases, wherein the application programs are configured to be installed on the computing device; and

a computer-implemented query distributor programmed to (i) identify, in the textual query, a first carrier phrase from the plurality of carrier phrases, and (ii) identify a first third-party application program from the plurality of third-party application programs to which the first carrier phrase has been assigned in the carrier phrase database, so as to cause the query distributor to provide all or some of the textual query for receipt by the first third-party application program.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the all or some of the textual query is a portion of the textual query that does not include the carrier phrase.

13. The system of claim 11, further comprising a computer-implemented voice query encoder for generating the data based on the voice query that is orally provided to the computing device by a user of the computing device.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the query distributor is a component of an operating system of the computing device, and wherein the query distributor does not provide third-party application programs that are not the first third-party application program the all or some of the textual query.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the first third-party application program determines operations to perform based on a content of the all or some of the textual query.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the determination of the operations to perform by the first application program are not determined by the operating system.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the determination of operations to perform by the first third-party application program is defined by instructions that were included as part of an install file for the first third-party application program, the install file for the first application program having been received at the computing device over a network in response to user input that requested receipt of the install file for the first application program.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein the speech recognizer generates the first carrier phrase based on a first language model,

wherein the speech recognizer selects, based on the first carrier phrase, a second language model from a plurality of language models that are assigned to carrier phrases, and

wherein the speech recognizer generates, from the voice query, a remaining portion of the textual query that does not include the carrier phrase, based on use of the second language model.

19. The system of claim 11, wherein the query distributor identifies carrier phrases by comparing beginning portions of textual queries to carrier phrases, and wherein if the query distributor does not identify carrier phrases in a beginning portion of the textual queries, the query distributor indicates that carrier phrases were not identified in the textual queries.

20. The system of claim 11, wherein the third-party application programs are web applications that the computing device has loaded upon visiting respective Uniform Resource Indicators (URI).

21. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving, by a computing device, an orally-provided voice query and generating data that represents content of the voice query;

providing the data by the computing device to a server system;

receiving, by the computing device and from the server system, a textual query that has been determined by a speech recognizer at the server system to be a textual form of at least part of the data;

determining that the textual query includes a carrier phrase of one or more words that is reserved by a first third-party application program installed on the computing device;

selecting the first third-party application, from a group of one or more third-party applications, to receive all or a part of the textual query; and

providing, by the computing device, all or a part of the textual query to the selected first application program.

22. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the all or part of the textual query that is provided to the selected first application program excludes the carrier phrase.

23. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the data represents an audio recording of the orally-provided voice query, and wherein the orally-provided voice query was received by the computing device in response to a user selection of a button that is provided by the computing device for submitting voice queries.

24. The computer-implemented method of claim 23, wherein a content of the textual query includes words of a human-understandable language.

25. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the operations further comprise providing, by the computing device and to the first third-party application program, the carrier phrase.

26. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the all or a part of the textual query is provided to the first third-party application program so as to cause the first third-party application program to perform actions (i) that are defined by the first third-party application program and (ii) that are based on a content of the all or a part of the textual query.

27. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein the operations further comprise determining that third-party application programs other than the first application program have not registered a carrier phrase that is included in the textual query,

wherein each of the third-party application programs other than the first application program is not provided the all or a part of the textual query.

28. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein each of the third-party application programs was installed on the computing device from an install file that was received at the computing device over a network, the install file for each third-party application program being received over the network in response to the computing device receiving user input that requests receipt of the install file over the network.