Abstract: An agent device includes an acquirer configured to acquire an utterance of a user of a first vehicle, and a first agent controller configured to perform processing for providing a service including causing an output device to output a response of voice in response to an utterance of the user of the first vehicle acquired by the acquirer. When there is a difference between a service which is utilized in the first vehicle and is available from one or more agent controllers including at least the first agent controller and a service which is utilized in a second vehicle and is available from one or more agent controllers, the first agent controller provides information on the difference.

Abstract: Vehicle-based sign language communication systems and methods are provided herein. An example device can be configured to determine a sign language protocol used by the first user, determine a target language used by a second user, obtain a translation library based on the sign language protocol and the target language, receive spoken word input from a second user through a microphone, convert the spoken word input into sign language output using the translation library, and provide the sign language output using a sign language output device.

Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed herein for discerning aspects of user speech to determine user intent and/or other acoustic features of a sound input without the use of an ASR engine. To this end, a processor may receive a sound signal comprising raw acoustic data from a client device, and divides the data into acoustic units. The processor feeds the acoustic units through a first machine learning model to obtain a first output and determines a first mapping, using the first output, of each respective acoustic unit to a plurality of candidate representations of the respective acoustic unit. The processor feeds each candidate representation of the plurality through a second machine learning model to obtain a second output, determines a second mapping, using the second output, of each candidate representation to a known condition, and determines a label for the sound signal based on the second mapping.

Abstract: Among other things, a developer of an interaction application for an enterprise can create items of content to be provided to an assistant platform for use in responses to requests of end-users. The developer can deploy the interaction application using defined items of content and an available general interaction model including intents and sample utterances having slots. The developer can deploy the interaction application without requiring the developer to formulate any of the intents, sample utterances, or slots of the general interaction model.

Abstract: A method of speaker identification comprises receiving an audio signal representing speech; performing a first voice biometric process on the audio signal to attempt to identify whether the speech is the speech of an enrolled speaker; and, if the first voice biometric process makes an initial determination that the speech is the speech of an enrolled user, performing a second voice biometric process on the audio signal to attempt to identify whether the speech is the speech of the enrolled speaker. The second voice biometric process is selected to be more discriminative than the first voice biometric process.

Abstract: A method of enrolling a user in a speaker recognition system comprises receiving a sample of the user's speech. A trial voice print is generated from the sample of the user's speech. A score is obtained relating to the trial voice print. The user is enrolled on the basis of the trial voice print only if the score meets a predetermined criterion.

Abstract: In a conversation analyzing device, a microphone detects conversation voice of a first analysis subject person who possesses the conversation analyzing device. An acceleration sensor detects movement of the conversation analyzing device. A wireless communication unit (a) detects another conversation analyzing device possessed by another second analysis subject person, and (b) transmits as movement history information a history of movement of the conversation analyzing device to the other conversation analyzing device, and receives movement history information from the other conversation analyzing device.

Abstract: A technique for controlling a voice-enabled device using voice commands includes receiving an audio signal that is generated in response to a verbal utterance, generating a verbal utterance indicator for the verbal utterance based on the audio signal, selecting a first command for a voice-controlled application residing within the voice-enabled device based on the verbal utterance indicator, and transmitting the first command to the voice-controlled application as an input.

Abstract: Techniques for confirming an operator of a vehicle is drowsy are described. A vehicle computing system sends data (e.g., raw sensor data and/or alert data corresponding to an indication that a driver is impaired determined based on the raw sensor data) to a remote server(s). The remote server(s) confirms the driver is impaired based on the raw sensor data and/or other contextual data. The remote server(s) then receives output data from a speechlet and causes the vehicle computing system to present output audio corresponding to output data.

Abstract: Disclosed are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable media for a language proficiency inference system used to determine a user's proficiency in one or more languages. The language proficiency inference system determines both text-based probability scores and profile-based probability scores indicating a probability that a user speaks a language or set of languages. The text-based probability score is based on text associated with the first user, whereas the profile-based probability score is based profile data of the user. The language proficiency inference system determines aggregated probability scores based on the corresponding text-based and profile-based probability scores. For example, the aggregated probability score is the sum of the text and profile-based probability scores. The language proficiency inference system uses the aggregated scores to determine the languages in which the user is proficient.

Abstract: The present disclosure provides a method and system based on speech and augmented reality environment interaction. The method comprises: obtaining a user's speech data and obtaining an operation instruction corresponding to the speech data; performing processing for the augmented reality environment according to the operation instruction, and displaying an augmented reality processing result. According to the present embodiment, it is possible to improve an interaction efficiency of the augmented reality environment by means of the speech and augmented reality environment interaction.

Abstract: A voice recognition method, device, and a server are provided. The method includes: receiving a user voice; determining a wake-up voice of a wake-up word in the user voice, according to an acoustic feature of the user voice; and labeling the wake-up voice with a silence identifier; and ignoring the wake-up voice based on the silence identifier during voice recognition. As such, when a complex decoding algorithm is used to recognize the user voice, recognition of the wake-up word that is irrelevant to an instruction of the user is omitted, thus reducing the data amount to be processed by the decoding algorithm and improving the efficiency of voice recognition.

Abstract: Apparatuses, methods and storage medium associated with a spoken dialogue system are disclosed herein. In embodiments, an apparatus for natural machine conversing with a user may comprise a listening component to detect a keyword that denotes start of a conversation; a dialogue engine to converse with the user during the conversation; and a controller to selectively activate or cause to be activated one of the listening component or the dialogue component, and to pass control to the activated listening component or the activated dialogue engine, based at least in part on a state of the conversation. Other embodiments may be disclosed or claimed.

Abstract: Example methods and apparatus to audio watermarking and watermark detection and extraction are disclosed herein. Example methods disclosed herein include determining a first watermark symbol encoded in encoded audio samples and storing the first watermark symbol in tangible memory. Disclosed example methods also include determining a second watermark symbol encoded in the encoded audio samples and storing the second watermark symbol in the tangible memory. Disclosed example methods further include, in response to determining that the first watermark symbol matches the second watermark symbol, outputting the first watermark symbol.

Abstract: To provide a bandwidth extension method which allows reduction of computation amount in bandwidth extension and suppression of deterioration of quality in the bandwidth to be extended. In the bandwidth extension method: a low frequency bandwidth signal is transformed into a QMF domain to generate a first low frequency QMF spectrum; pitch-shifted signals are generated by applying different shifting factors on the low frequency bandwidth signal; a high frequency QMF spectrum is generated by time-stretching the pitch-shifted signals in the QMF domain; the high frequency QMF spectrum is modified; and the modified high frequency QMF spectrum is combined with the first low frequency QMF spectrum.

Abstract: Updating a voice template for recognizing a speaker on the basis of a voice uttered by the speaker is disclosed. Stored voice templates indicate distinctive characteristics of utterances from speakers. Distinctive characteristics are extracted for a specific speaker based on a voice message utterance received from that speaker. The distinctive characteristics are compared to the characteristics indicated by the stored voice templates to selected a template that matches within a predetermined threshold. The selected template is updated on the basis of the extracted characteristics.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for collecting web data in order to create diverse language models. A system configured to practice the method first crawls, such as via a crawler operating on a computing device, a set of documents in a network of interconnected devices according to a visitation policy, wherein the visitation policy is configured to focus on novelty regions for a current language model built from previous crawling cycles by crawling documents whose vocabulary considered likely to fill gaps in the current language model. A language model from a previous cycle can be used to guide the creation of a language model in the following cycle. The novelty regions can include documents with high perplexity values over the current language model.

Abstract: A system and method for voice control of a media playback device is disclosed. The method includes receiving an instruction of a voice command, converting the voice command to text, transmitting the text command to the playback device, and having the playback device execute the command. An instruction may include a command to play a set of audio tracks, and the media playback device plays the set of audio tracks upon receiving the instruction.

Abstract: [Object] To provide a communication system and a communication control method capable of obtaining reliable feedback from a user further naturally through a conversation with an agent without imposing a burden on the user. [Solution] The communication system includes: a communication unit configured to receive request information for requesting feedback on a specific experience of a user; an accumulation unit configured to accumulate the feedback received from a client terminal of the user via the communication unit; and a control unit configured to perform control such that a question for requesting the feedback on the specific experience of the user based on the request information is transmitted to the client terminal of the user at a timing according to context of the user, and feedback input by the user in response to the question output as speech of an agent via the client terminal is received.

Abstract: A contact center system can receive audio messages. The system can review audio messages by identifying phoneme strings within the audio messages associated with a characteristic. A phoneme can be a component of spoken language. Identified phoneme strings are used to analyze subsequent audio messages to determine the presence of the characteristic without requiring human analysis. Thus, the identification of phoneme strings then can be used to determine a characteristic of audio messages without transcribing the messages.