Routing queries based on carrier phrase registration

• US 8,731,939 B1
• Filed: 08/06/2010
• Issued: 05/20/2014
• 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, Byrne, William J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Abebe, Daniel D
• Application Number:
  US12/851,666
• Time in Patent Office: 1,383 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-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a processor perform operations, comprising:

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

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

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

identifying that the text includes a carrier phrase of one or more words that is reserved for a first third-party application program installed on the computing device; and

providing, by the computing device, all or a part of the received at least portion of the text to the first third-party application program.

2. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the all or part of the received at least portion of the text that is provided to the first third-party application program excludes the carrier phrase.

3. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the data represents an audio recording of the oral input, and wherein the oral input was received by the computing device in response to a user selection of a button that is provided by the computing device for submitting oral inputs.

4. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 3, wherein a content of the text includes words of a human-understandable language.

5. The computer-readable storage medium 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-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the all or a part of the received at least portion of the text 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 received at least portion of the text.

7. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise identifying that third-party application programs other than the first third-party application program have not registered a carrier phrase that is included in the text,

wherein each of the third-party application programs other than the first third-party application program is not provided the all or a part of the received at least portion of the text.

8. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the first third-party application program was installed on the computing device from an install file that was received at the computing device over a network, the install file for the first 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. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein:

identifying that the text includes the carrier phrase that is reserved for the first third-party application program includes identifying that the carrier phrase is reserved for the first third-party application program from among a group of differing carrier phrases that have been reserved for respective third-party application programs in a group of third-party application programs; and

the carrier phrase was reserved for the first third-party application program by the first third-party application program.

10. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein:

identifying that the text includes the carrier phrase that is reserved for the first third-party application program includes identifying that the carrier phrase is reserved for the first third-party application program from among a group of differing carrier phrases that have been reserved for respective third-party application programs in a group of third-party application programs; and

the carrier phrase was reserved for the first third-party application program on behalf of the first third-party application program by a developer of the first third-party application program.

11. A computer-implemented method comprising:

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

determining, by the server system or the computing device, that the text includes a carrier phrase of one or more words that is assigned to a first third-party application program, wherein the first third-party application program was installed on the computing device or is a web application program that the computing device has visited; and

providing, by the server system or the computing device and for receipt by the first third-party application program at the computing device, at least a remaining portion of the text, the remaining portion of the text being a portion of the text that does not include the carrier phrase.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein determining that the text includes the carrier phrase that is assigned to the first third-party application program includes comparing a beginning portion of the text to carrier phrases registered by multiple respective third-party application programs.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein the first third-party application program was assigned the carrier phrase in response to a request by the first third-party application program to register the carrier phrase.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein the first third-party application program was assigned the carrier phrase in response to a request on behalf of the first third-party application program by a developer of the first third-party application program to register the carrier phrase.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, further comprising providing, by the server system or the computing device and for receipt by the first third-party application program at the computing device, the carrier phrase.

16. A computer-implemented system comprising:

carrier phrase storage 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, wherein the third-party application programs are configured to be installed on a computing device or are third-party web applications that the computing device has loaded upon visiting respective Uniform Resource Indicators (URI); and

a computer-implemented input distributor programmed to (i) identify, in text generated by a computer-implemented speech recognizer that received data that represented content of an oral input that was orally provided to the computing device, 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 storage, so as to cause the input distributor to provide all or some of the text for receipt by the first third-party application program.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the all or some of the text is a portion of the text that does not include the first carrier phrase.

18. The system of claim 16, further comprising a computer-implemented oral input encoder for generating the data based on the oral input that has been orally provided to the computing device by a user of the computing device.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the input distributor is a component of an operating system of the computing device, and wherein the input distributor does not provide third-party application programs that are not the first third-party application program the all or some of the text.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the first third-party application program determines operations to perform based on a content of the all or some of the text.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the determination of the operations to perform by the first third-party application program are not determined by the operating system.

22. The system of claim 20, wherein the determination of the operations to perform by the first third-party application program is defined by instructions that have been included as part of an install file for the first third-party application program, the install file for the first third-party 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 third-party application program.

23. The system of claim 16, 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 oral input, a remaining portion of the text that does not include the carrier phrase, based on use of the second language model.

24. The system of claim 16, wherein the input distributor identifies carrier phrases by comparing beginning portions of texts to carrier phrases, and wherein if the input distributor does not identify carrier phrases in a beginning portion of the texts, the input distributor indicates that carrier phrases have not been identified in the texts.

25. The system of claim 16, wherein the third-party web applications are not installed on the mobile computing device.

26. The system of claim 16, wherein the carrier phrase storage is programmed to identify the plurality of carrier phrases in response to requests by the third-party application programs to reserve the respective carrier phrases.

27. The system of claim 16, wherein the carrier phrase storage is programmed to identify the plurality of carrier phrases in response to requests by providers of the third-party application programs to reserve the respective carrier phrases.

28. The system of claim 16, further comprising the computer-implemented speech recognizer.

29. The system of claim 16, further comprising the computing device including the carrier phrase storage and the computer-implemented input distributor.

30. A method comprising:

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

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

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

identifying that the text includes a carrier phrase of one or more words that is reserved for a first third-party application program installed on the computing device; and

providing, by the computing device, all or a part of the received at least portion of the text to the first third-party application program.

31. The method of claim 30, wherein the all or part of the received at least portion of the text that is provided to the first third-party application program excludes the carrier phrase.

32. The method of claim 30, wherein the data represents an audio recording of the oral input, and wherein the oral input has been received by the computing device in response to a user selection of a button that is provided by the computing device for submitting oral inputs.

33. The method of claim 32, wherein a content of the text includes words of a human-understandable language.

34. The method of claim 30, further comprising providing, by the computing device and to the first third-party application program, the carrier phrase.

35. The method of claim 30, wherein the all or a part of the received at least portion of the text 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 received at least portion of the text.

36. The method of claim 30, further comprising identifying that third-party application programs other than the first third-party application program have not registered a carrier phrase that is included in the text,

wherein each of the third-party application programs other than the first third-party application program is not provided the all or a part of the received at least portion of the text.

37. The method of claim 30, wherein the first third-party application program has been installed on the computing device from an install file that has been received at the computing device over a network, the install file for the first 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.

38. The method of claim 30, wherein:

identifying that the text includes the carrier phrase that is reserved for the first third-party application program includes identifying that the carrier phrase is reserved for the first third-party application program from among a group of differing carrier phrases that have been reserved for respective third-party application programs in a group of third-party application programs; and

the carrier phrase was reserved for the first third-party application program by the first third-party application program.

39. The method of claim 30, wherein:

identifying that the text includes the carrier phrase that is reserved for the first third-party application program includes identifying that the carrier phrase is reserved for the first third-party application program from among a group of differing carrier phrases that have been reserved for respective third-party application programs in a group of third-party application programs; and

the carrier phrase was reserved for the first third-party application program on behalf of the first third-party application program by a developer of the first third-party application program.

40. A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a processor perform operations, comprising:

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

determining, by the server system or the computing device, that the text includes a carrier phrase of one or more words that is assigned to a first third-party application program, wherein the first third-party application program was installed on the computing device or is a web application program that the computing device has visited; and

providing, by the server system or the computing device and for receipt by the first third-party application program at the computing device, at least a remaining portion of the text, the remaining portion of the text being a portion of the text that does not include the carrier phrase.

41. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 40, wherein determining that the text includes the carrier phrase that is assigned to the first third-party application program includes comparing a beginning portion of the text to carrier phrases registered by multiple respective third-party application programs.

42. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 40, wherein the first third-party application program was assigned the carrier phrase in response to a request by the first third-party application program to register the carrier phrase.

43. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 40, wherein the first third-party application program was assigned the carrier phrase in response to a request on behalf of the first third-party application program by a developer of the first third-party application program to register the carrier phrase.

44. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 40, further comprising providing, by the server system or the computing device and for receipt by the first third-party application program at the computing device, the carrier phrase.