Patents Assigned to VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
  • Publication number: 20170345417
    Abstract: In certain implementations, follow-up responses may be provided for prior natural language inputs of a user. As an example, a natural language input associated with a user may be received at a computer system. A determination of whether information sufficient for providing an adequate response to the natural language input is currently accessible to the computer system may be effectuated. A first response to the natural language input (that indicates that a follow-up response will be provided) may be provided based on a determination that information sufficient for providing an adequate response to the natural language input is not currently accessible. Information sufficient for providing an adequate response to the natural language input may be received. A second response to the natural language input may then be provided based on the received sufficient information.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 18, 2017
    Publication date: November 30, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Michael R. Kennewick, JR., Michael R. Kennewick, SR.
  • Publication number: 20170294189
    Abstract: A system and method for an integrated, multi-modal, multi-device natural language voice services environment may be provided. In particular, the environment may include a plurality of voice-enabled devices each having intent determination capabilities for processing multi-modal natural language inputs in addition to knowledge of the intent determination capabilities of other devices in the environment. Further, the environment may be arranged in a centralized manner, a distributed peer-to-peer manner, or various combinations thereof. As such, the various devices may cooperate to determine intent of multi-modal natural language inputs, and commands, queries, or other requests may be routed to one or more of the devices best suited to take action in response thereto.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 26, 2017
    Publication date: October 12, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Robert A. KENNEWICK, Chris WEIDER
  • Patent number: 9786277
    Abstract: Systems and methods gathering text commands in response to a command context using a first crowdsourced are discussed herein. A command context for a natural language processing system may be identified, where the command context is associated with a command context condition to provide commands to the natural language processing system. One or more command creators associated with one or more command creation devices may be selected. A first application one the one or more command creation devices may be configured to display command creation instructions for each of the one or more command creators to provide text commands that satisfy the command context, and to display a field for capturing a user-generated text entry to satisfy the command creation condition in accordance with the command creation instructions. Systems and methods for reviewing the text commands using second and crowdsourced jobs are also presented herein.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Date of Patent: October 10, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Patent number: 9772993
    Abstract: A system and method of recording utterances for building Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) models, which are used to build dialog systems in which a computer listens and responds to human voice dialog. Utterances to be uttered may be provided to users through their mobile devices, which may record the user uttering (e.g., verbalizing, speaking, etc.) the utterances and upload the recording to a computer for processing. The use of the user's mobile device, which is programmed with an utterance collection application (e.g., configured as a mobile app), facilitates the use of crowd-sourcing human intelligence tasking for widespread collection of utterances from a population of users. As such, obtaining large datasets for building NER models may be facilitated by the system and method disclosed herein.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 20, 2016
    Date of Patent: September 26, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Daniela Braga, Spencer John Rothwell, Faraz Romani, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter, Michael Kennewick
  • Publication number: 20170270925
    Abstract: A conversational, natural language voice user interface may provide an integrated voice navigation services environment. The voice user interface may enable a user to make natural language requests relating to various navigation services, and further, may interact with the user in a cooperative, conversational dialogue to resolve the requests. Through dynamic awareness of context, available sources of information, domain knowledge, user behavior and preferences, and external systems and devices, among other things, the voice user interface may provide an integrated environment in which the user can speak conversationally, using natural language, to issue queries, commands, or other requests relating to the navigation services provided in the environment.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 3, 2017
    Publication date: September 21, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Michael R. KENNEWICK, Catherine CHEUNG, Larry BALDWIN, Ari SALOMON, Michael TJALVE, Sheetal GUTTIGOLI, Lynn ARMSTRONG, Philippe DI CRISTO, Bernie ZIMMERMAN, Sam MENAKER
  • Patent number: 9747896
    Abstract: In certain implementations, follow-up responses may be provided for prior natural language inputs of a user. As an example, a natural language input associated with a user may be received at a computer system. A determination of whether information sufficient for providing an adequate response to the natural language input is currently accessible to the computer system may be effectuated. A first response to the natural language input (that indicates that a follow-up response will be provided) may be provided based on a determination that information sufficient for providing an adequate response to the natural language input is not currently accessible. Information sufficient for providing an adequate response to the natural language input may be received. A second response to the natural language input may then be provided based on the received sufficient information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 15, 2015
    Date of Patent: August 29, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Michael R. Kennewick, Jr., Michael R. Kennewick, Sr.
  • Patent number: 9734138
    Abstract: A system and method of tagging utterances with Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) labels using unmanaged crowds is provided. The system may generate various annotation jobs in which a user, among a crowd, is asked to tag which parts of an utterance, if any, relate to various entities associated with a domain. For a given domain that is associated with a number of entities that exceeds a threshold N value, multiple batches of jobs (each batch having jobs that have a limited number of entities for tagging) may be used to tag a given utterance from that domain. This reduces the cognitive load imposed on a user, and prevents the user from having to tag more than N entities. As such, a domain with a large number of entities may be tagged efficiently by crowd participants without overloading each crowd participant with too many entities to tag.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Date of Patent: August 15, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John Rothwell, Daniela Braga, Ahmad Khamis Elshenawy, Stephen Steele Carter
  • Publication number: 20170221134
    Abstract: In certain implementations, a system for facilitating voice commerce is provided. A user input comprising a natural language utterance related to a product or service to be purchased may be received. A first product or service that is to be purchased may be determined based on the utterance. First payment information that is to be used to purchase the first product or service may be obtained. First shipping information that is to be used to deliver the first product or service may be obtained. A purchase transaction for the first product or service may completed based on the first payment information and the first shipping information without further user input, after the receipt of utterance, that identifies a product or service type or a product or service, seller information, payment information, shipping information, or other information related to purchasing the first product or service.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 11, 2017
    Publication date: August 3, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventor: Michael R. KENNEWICK, SR.
  • Publication number: 20170221482
    Abstract: A system and method for processing multi-modal device interactions in a natural language voice services environment may be provided. In particular, one or more multi-modal device interactions may be received in a natural language voice services environment that includes one or more electronic devices. The multi-modal device interactions may include a non-voice interaction with at least one of the electronic devices or an application associated therewith, and may further include a natural language utterance relating to the non-voice interaction. Context relating to the non-voice interaction and the natural language utterance may be extracted and combined to determine an intent of the multi-modal device interaction, and a request may then be routed to one or more of the electronic devices based on the determined intent of the multi-modal device interaction.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 13, 2017
    Publication date: August 3, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Larry BALDWIN, Chris WEIDER
  • Patent number: 9711143
    Abstract: A system and method for an integrated, multi-modal, multi-device natural language voice services environment may be provided. In particular, the environment may include a plurality of voice-enabled devices each having intent determination capabilities for processing multi-modal natural language inputs in addition to knowledge of the intent determination capabilities of other devices in the environment. Further, the environment may be arranged in a centralized manner, a distributed peer-to-peer manner, or various combinations thereof. As such, the various devices may cooperate to determine intent of multi-modal natural language inputs, and commands, queries, or other requests may be routed to one or more of the devices best suited to take action in response thereto.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 4, 2016
    Date of Patent: July 18, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Robert A. Kennewick, Chris Weider
  • Publication number: 20170162197
    Abstract: A system and method is provided for adjusting natural language conversations between a human user and a computer based on the human user's cognitive state and/or situational state, particularly when the user is operating a vehicle. The system may disengage in conversation with the user (e.g., the driver) or take other actions based on various situational and/or user states. For example, the system may disengage conversation when the system detects that the driving situation is complex (e.g., car merging onto a highway, turning right with multiple pedestrians trying to cross, etc.). The system may (in addition or instead) sense the user's cognitive load and disengage conversation based on the cognitive load. The system may alter its personality (e.g. by engaging in mentally non-taxing conversations such as telling jokes based on situational and/or user states.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 6, 2016
    Publication date: June 8, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventor: Philip R. COHEN
  • Publication number: 20170109451
    Abstract: The invention relates to systems and methods of providing in-view and out-of-view request-related result regions for respective result categories. The system may facilitate result presentation by providing, in response to a user request, at least one region that is designated to initially be in-view and at least one region that is designated to initially be out-of-view where: (i) the initial in-view region comprises one or more results related to the user request and a first category; and (ii) the initial out-of-view region comprises one or more results related to the user request and the second category. A result related to a category may comprise a result related to a specific topic, a result of a specific type, a result from a specific source, or other result. A user request may comprise a query, a command, or other user request.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 30, 2016
    Publication date: April 20, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventor: Michael R. KENNEWICK, SR.
  • Patent number: 9626703
    Abstract: In certain implementations, a system for facilitating voice commerce is provided. A user input comprising a natural language utterance related to a product or service to be purchased may be received. A first product or service that is to be purchased may be determined based on the utterance. First payment information that is to be used to purchase the first product or service may be obtained. First shipping information that is to be used to deliver the first product or service may be obtained. A purchase transaction for the first product or service may completed based on the first payment information and the first shipping information without further user input, after the receipt of utterance, that identifies a product or service type or a product or service, seller information, payment information, shipping information, or other information related to purchasing the first product or service.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 15, 2015
    Date of Patent: April 18, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventor: Michael R. Kennewick, Sr.
  • Patent number: 9620113
    Abstract: A conversational, natural language voice user interface may provide an integrated voice navigation services environment. The voice user interface may enable a user to make natural language requests relating to various navigation services, and further, may interact with the user in a cooperative, conversational dialogue to resolve the requests. Through dynamic awareness of context, available sources of information, domain knowledge, user behavior and preferences, and external systems and devices, among other things, the voice user interface may provide an integrated environment in which the user can speak conversationally, using natural language, to issue queries, commands, or other requests relating to the navigation services provided in the environment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 5, 2014
    Date of Patent: April 11, 2017
    Assignee: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Michael R. Kennewick, Catherine Cheung, Larry Baldwin, Ari Salomon, Michael Tjalve, Sheetal Guttigoli, Lynn Armstrong, Philippe Di Cristo, Bernie Zimmerman, Sam Menaker
  • Publication number: 20170068656
    Abstract: A system and method of recording utterances for building Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) models, which are used to build dialog systems in which a computer listens and responds to human voice dialog. Utterances to be uttered may be provided to users through their mobile devices, which may record the user uttering (e.g., verbalizing, speaking, etc.) the utterances and upload the recording to a computer for processing. The use of the user's mobile device, which is programmed with an utterance collection application (e.g., configured as a mobile app), facilitates the use of crowd-sourcing human intelligence tasking for widespread collection of utterances from a population of users. As such, obtaining large datasets for building NER models may be facilitated by the system and method disclosed herein.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 20, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Daniela BRAGA, Spencer John ROTHWELL, Faraz ROMANI, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER, Michael KENNEWICK
  • Publication number: 20170068651
    Abstract: A system and method of tagging utterances with Named Entity Recognition (“NER”) labels using unmanaged crowds is provided. The system may generate various annotation jobs in which a user, among a crowd, is asked to tag which parts of an utterance, if any, relate to various entities associated with a domain. For a given domain that is associated with a number of entities that exceeds a threshold N value, multiple batches of jobs (each batch having jobs that have a limited number of entities for tagging) may be used to tag a given utterance from that domain. This reduces the cognitive load imposed on a user, and prevents the user from having to tag more than N entities. As such, a domain with a large number of entities may be tagged efficiently by crowd participants without overloading each crowd participant with too many entities to tag.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Publication number: 20170069325
    Abstract: Systems and methods of providing text related to utterances, and gathering voice data in response to the text are provide herein. In various implementations, an identification token that identifies a first file for a voice data collection campaign, and a second file for a session script may be received from a natural language processing training device. The first file and the second file may be used to configure the mobile application to display a sequence of screens, each of the sequence of screens containing text of at least one utterance specified in the voice data collection campaign. Voice data may be received from the natural language processing training device in response to user interaction with the text of the at least one utterance. The voice data and the text may be stored in a transcription library.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 28, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Daniela BRAGA, Faraz ROMANI, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Michael KENNEWICK
  • Publication number: 20170068659
    Abstract: Systems and methods gathering text commands in response to a command context using a first crowdsourced are discussed herein. A command context for a natural language processing system may be identified, where the command context is associated with a command context condition to provide commands to the natural language processing system. One or more command creators associated with one or more command creation devices may be selected. A first application one the one or more command creation devices may be configured to display command creation instructions for each of the one or more command creators to provide text commands that satisfy the command context, and to display a field for capturing a user-generated text entry to satisfy the command creation condition in accordance with the command creation instructions. Systems and methods for reviewing the text commands using second and crowdsourced jobs are also presented herein.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Publication number: 20170069326
    Abstract: Systems and methods of validating transcriptions of natural language content using crowdsourced validation jobs are provided herein. In various implementations, a transcription pair comprising natural language content and text corresponding to a transcription of the natural language content may be gathered. A first group of validation devices may be selected for reviewing the transcription pair. A first crowdsourced validation job may be created for the first group of validation devices. The first crowdsourced validation job may be provided to the first group of validation devices. A vote representing whether or not the text accurately represents the natural language content may be received from each of the first group of validation devices. A validation score may be assigned to the transcription pair based, at least in part, on the votes from each of the first group of validation devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 25, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VOICEBOX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Spencer John ROTHWELL, Daniela BRAGA, Ahmad Khamis ELSHENAWY, Stephen Steele CARTER
  • Publication number: 20170069039
    Abstract: A system and method of characterizing crowd users that participate in crowd-sourced jobs based on responses to the jobs, and scheduling their participation based on user-indicated schedules of user availability or system-predicted schedules of user availability. A system may determine a level of quality of a response to a crowd job. The system may use the determined quality of response to determine a reward. The system may schedule a crowd user's participation in a future crowd job. The user may be identified based on the quality of previous responses provided by the user. The system may schedule the user's participation based on explicit input from the user indicating availability and/or based on a system-predicted availability of the user. When the future crowd job is or will be deployed, the system may provide the user with instructions to participate and/or otherwise provide the user with the crowd job.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2016
    Publication date: March 9, 2017
    Applicant: VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
    Inventors: Robert A. KENNEWICK, Spencer John ROTHWELL, John GILBERT