Patents Examined by Daniel Abebe
  • Patent number: 11341966
    Abstract: An output technology for improving information delivery corresponding to a voice request is provided. In one embodiment, a method by which an electronic device comprising a voice-based interface provides information comprises the steps of: receiving a voice request from a user through the voice-based interface; acquiring response information corresponding to the voice request; outputting the response information in a reply voice, which is an auditory output form, through at least one medium among a plurality of media including a main medium corresponding to the voice-based interface and a sub medium included in other electronic devices linkable with the electronic device; and providing other outputs for at least a part of the response information through at least one medium, which is the same as or different from the medium through which the reply voice is being outputted, among the plurality of media.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 25, 2019
    Date of Patent: May 24, 2022
    Assignees: NAVER CORPORATION, LINE CORPORATION
    Inventor: Myeongsoo Shin
  • Patent number: 11335342
    Abstract: An approach is provided in which the approach captures a voice command spoken by a user along with a set of data generated from a smart contact lens worn by the user. The approach matches the set of data to a command augmentation indicator that identifies an augmentation to the voice command. The approach aggregates the command augmentation indicator with the voice command into an aggregated command and executes the aggregated command accordingly.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 21, 2020
    Date of Patent: May 17, 2022
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Raghuveer Prasad Nagar, Sarbajit K. Rakshit, Jagadesh Ramaswamy Hulugundi, Reji Jose
  • Patent number: 11330320
    Abstract: Provided are a display device and a screen display method for of the display device. In detail, disclosed are a display device capable of controlling a screen thereof through voice recognition, and a screen display method of the display device. Some of the disclosed embodiments provide a display device for displaying, on the screen, a recommendation guide corresponding to the voice recognition result, and a screen display method of the display device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2017
    Date of Patent: May 10, 2022
    Assignee: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
    Inventor: Ji-won Yoo
  • Patent number: 11308956
    Abstract: To provide an information processing apparatus capable of notifying a user of a message at an appropriate timing. An information processing apparatus includes: a first acquiring unit that acquires first messages transmitted from other users to a user in a service configured to transmit and receive messages between the user and the other users; a second acquiring unit that acquires user information regarding the user; a determining unit that determines whether or not to notify the user of the first messages on the basis of the first messages and the user information; and a notification control unit that controls notification processing of notifying the user of the first messages determined to be notified to the user by the determining unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 10, 2018
    Date of Patent: April 19, 2022
    Assignee: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventor: Hideo Nagasaka
  • Patent number: 11289079
    Abstract: The present technology relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method for enabling a message to be more reliably conveyed to a user. Provided with a presentation unit that presents information to a first user, a detection unit that detects a reaction indicating that the first user has received the information, a search unit that searches for a second user in a case where the detection unit has not been able to detect the reaction, and a request unit that requests the second user found by the search unit to convey a message to the first user. A response promotion message asking for a response is output to the first user in the case where the detection unit has not been able to detect the reaction, and the search unit searches for the second user in the case where the detection unit has not been able to detect the reaction after the response promotion message has been output.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2018
    Date of Patent: March 29, 2022
    Assignee: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Shinichi Kawano, Mari Saito, Hiro Iwase
  • Patent number: 11270716
    Abstract: A system and method are provided for very short pitch detection and coding for speech or audio signals. The system and method include detecting whether there is a very short pitch lag in a speech or audio signal that is shorter than a conventional minimum pitch limitation using a combination of time domain and frequency domain pitch detection techniques. The pitch detection techniques include using pitch correlations in time domain and detecting a lack of low frequency energy in the speech or audio signal in frequency domain. The detected very short pitch lag is coded using a pitch range from a predetermined minimum very short pitch limitation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 30, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 8, 2022
    Assignee: HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Yang Gao, Fengyan Qi
  • Patent number: 11264022
    Abstract: There is provided an information processing apparatus, method, and program. The information processing apparatus includes: an information acquisition unit configured to acquire input information of a user that includes a time lag between an input start and end, in a mode in which a plurality of contents are consecutively provided via at least one non-content period; and an output control unit configured, in a case where the input information is acquired in a content period in which first content or second content to be provided at a time later than the first content is being provided, to cause an output unit to output first output information on the basis of the input information, and in a case where the input information is acquired in the non-content period, to cause the output unit to output second output information different from the first output information, on the basis of the input information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 6, 2017
    Date of Patent: March 1, 2022
    Assignee: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Yuki Okamura, Makoto Murata, Masafumi Kato, Kengo Yoshii, Naoki Shibuya
  • Patent number: 11264026
    Abstract: The present application discloses a method, device, and system for interfacing with a terminal with a plurality of response modes. The method includes obtaining a voice command from a user, determining context information corresponding to the voice command, and performing a response operation in response to the voice command, the response operation being based at least in part on a response mode that is determined based at least in part on the context information, and the response mode indicating one or more interfaces for interaction between the terminal and the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 23, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 1, 2022
    Assignee: BANMA ZHIXING NETWORK (HONGKONG) CO., LIMITED
    Inventor: Liang Chen
  • Patent number: 11257485
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for neural network adaptive beamforming for multichannel speech recognition are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes the actions of receiving a first channel of audio data corresponding to an utterance and a second channel of audio data corresponding to the utterance. The actions further include generating a first set of filter parameters for a first filter based on the first channel of audio data and the second channel of audio data and a second set of filter parameters for a second filter based on the first channel of audio data and the second channel of audio data. The actions further include generating a single combined channel of audio data. The actions further include inputting the audio data to a neural network. The actions further include providing a transcription for the utterance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 10, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 22, 2022
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Bo Li, Ron J. Weiss, Michiel A. U. Bacchiani, Tara N. Sainath, Kevin William Wilson
  • Patent number: 11257479
    Abstract: A system and method has the ability to take information from a wide variety of sources and package it in a form that a user can accesses in a conversationally intuitive manner. Task or knowledge domain-specific knowledge bases acquired from structured and free-text sources, data extracted describing world state, or natural language and spoken language knowledge are used to “intelligently” respond to an operator's or user's verbal or written request for information. In the example of a maintenance system, a user may submit status-related questions, and the system might then verbalize a list of instructions of what further diagnostic information the maintainer should acquire through tests. As the maintainer verbalizes to the system their findings, the system might narrow down its assessment of likely faults and eventually verbalize to the maintainer specific steps, and potentially images and diagrams describing the necessary corrective maintenance. Additional applications are presented in the disclosure.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 15, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 22, 2022
    Assignee: Cybernet Systems Corp.
    Inventor: Charles J. Cohen
  • Patent number: 11250872
    Abstract: Method, apparatus, and computer program product are provided for customizing an automatic closed captioning system. In some embodiments, at a data use (DU) location, an automatic closed captioning system that includes a base model is provided, search criteria are defined to request from one or more data collection (DC) locations, a search request based on the search criteria is sent to the one or more DC locations, relevant closed caption data from the one or more DC locations are received responsive to the search request, the received relevant closed caption data are processed by computing a confidence score for each of a plurality of data sub-sets of the received relevant closed caption data and selecting one or more of the data sub-sets based on the confidence scores, and the automatic closed captioning system is customized by using the selected one or more data sub-sets to train the base model.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 14, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 15, 2022
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Samuel Thomas, Yinghui Huang, Masayuki Suzuki, Zoltan Tueske, Laurence P. Sansone, Michael A. Picheny
  • Patent number: 11244681
    Abstract: A system and a method for automating drive-thru orders are provided. In particular, a bridge board is provided that can integrate existing drive-thru hardware with computer devices executing machine learning models to detect and analyze speech from a drive-thru. The system and method employ vehicle tracking to account for vehicle behavior during its time at the drive-thru as well as enhanced vehicle analytics. Additionally, the system and method employ tools for assessing customer speed-of-service. Cameras and vehicle image analysis are used to link drive-thru and/or on-line food/beverage orders with vehicles entering the eatery property to accelerate food/beverage delivery to vehicle occupants.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 8, 2022
    Assignee: XENIAL, INC.
    Inventors: Christopher Siefken, William Wine, Arjun Wadwalkar, Brian Keith Jackson, Andrew Grindstaff
  • Patent number: 11238859
    Abstract: A natural-language voice chatbot is initiated and a voice session is established between the chatbot and a customer while the customer is operating a vehicle device within a vehicle. A pre-staged order is taken from a customer during the session and the session is suspended until the customer arrives at a store associated with the pre-staged order. A location-based trigger is raised when the customer is detected as being present at a transaction terminal of a store; the session is resumed on the transaction terminal and/or the vehicle device. The pre-stage order is confirmed during the resumed session and payment is obtained from the customer for the order when payment was not already obtained from the customer. The order is sent to a fulfillment station and, in an embodiment, the items associated with the order are delivered to the customer while the customer remains at the terminal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 1, 2022
    Assignee: NCR Corporation
    Inventors: Matthew Robert Burris, Shelby Frances Apps, Andrew Cohen, Gary C. Dalton, Jason Robert Dyer, Jodessiah Sumpter
  • Patent number: 11216617
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer readable media for machine translation between Arabic language and Arabic Sign Language are described.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 18, 2018
    Date of Patent: January 4, 2022
    Assignee: King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
    Inventors: Hamzah Luqman, Sabri A. Mahmoud
  • Patent number: 11217256
    Abstract: A voice interaction method, device, and terminal. The method includes receiving a wake-up prompt, activating an interactive mode according to the wake-up prompt, displaying a dialog prompt identification in the interactive mode, obtaining a vocal request, wherein the vocal request is input in response to the dialog prompt identification, and displaying a requested content according to the vocal request. In a variety of interaction scenarios, such as in a scenario of interacting with a smart home appliance, a user can continuously provide vocal requests in an interactive mode, without waking up the interactive mode repeatedly, thereby improving user experience.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2019
    Date of Patent: January 4, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU ONLINE NETWORK TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD., SHANGHAI XIAODU TECHNOLOGY CO. LTD.
    Inventors: Bingbing Fan, Hao Liang
  • Patent number: 11211075
    Abstract: The embodiments of the present disclosure provide a service control method, a service control apparatus and a device, the method including: determining an application service in operating state in an electronic device; and transmitting audio data captured by a microphone to the application service and a control service, where the application service is configured to perform multimedia information interaction according to the audio data, and the control service is configured to control the electronic device according to the audio data, thereby improving flexibility in controlling services in the electronic device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 30, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 28, 2021
    Inventors: Liang He, Aihui An, Yu Niu, Lifeng Zhao, Xiangdong Xue, Ji Zhou
  • Patent number: 11205432
    Abstract: A cross-platform communication method, a server device and an electronic device are provided. A user message from a first electronic device is received via a first service providing platform. A user intent of the user message and a keyword associated with at least one second electronic device are recognized. The contact information of the second electronic device is queried according to the keyword. A response message related to the user message is transmitted to the second electronic device via a second service providing platform according to the contact information and the user intent, such that the second electronic device performs a function according to the response message.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 7, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 21, 2021
    Assignee: Wistron Corporation
    Inventors: Chih-Peng Lo, Shu-Hui Yeh
  • Patent number: 11205430
    Abstract: Systems and methods for determining hint words that improve the accuracy of automated speech recognition (ASR) systems. Hint words are determined in the context of a user issuing voice commands in connection with a voice interface system. Terms are initially taken from most frequently occurring terms in operation of a voice interface system. For example, most frequently occurring terms that arise in electronic search queries or received commands are selected. Certain of these terms are selected as hint words, and the selected hint words are then transmitted to an ASR system to assist in translation of speech to text.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 1, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 21, 2021
    Assignee: ROVI GUIDES, INC.
    Inventors: Ankur Aher, Jeffry Copps Robert Jose
  • Patent number: 11205431
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for presenting a state of a voice interaction device are provided. The method includes: acquiring a current state of the voice interaction device; determining a current presentation mode corresponding to the current state, by searching a pre-stored correspondence relation between a state and a presentation mode according to the current state; and presenting the current state of the voice interaction device in the determined current presentation mode. In embodiments, a current state of a voice interaction device is presented to a user, and necessary usage recommendations and prompts are provided to a user, thereby improving user experience.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 21, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 21, 2021
    Assignees: BAIDU ONLINE NETWORK TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD., SHANGHAI XIAODU TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Shasha Wang, Gang Zhang, Yawen Diao, Tianyu Wang, Hongyu Chen, Yuning Yang, Zongliang Wen, Qiang Ju
  • Patent number: 11200896
    Abstract: Certain aspects of the present disclosure are directed to techniques and apparatus for media coordination. One example method generally includes receiving, from a first user device, a command to play a voice message and media content at one or more second user devices, and determining whether one or more services accessible by the one or more second user devices can be used to play the media content. The method may also include coordinating the voice message and the media content to be played by the one or more second user devices based on the determination.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 3, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 14, 2021
    Assignee: BOSE CORPORATION
    Inventors: Anne Marie Legge, Krishnakumar Subramanian, Sean Madigan