Patents Examined by Daniel D Abebe
  • Patent number: 8738368
    Abstract: A system for and method of speech processing for a vehicle. Speech is received from at least one vehicle occupant via a plurality of microphones corresponding to the plurality of zones in the vehicle, wherein the microphones convert the speech into speech signals. At least one active communication zone is determined in which the at least one vehicle occupant corresponding to the active communication zone is speaking Speech processing is modified in response to the determined active communication zone.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2012
    Date of Patent: May 27, 2014
    Assignee: GM Global Technology Operations LLC
    Inventors: Jesse T. Gratke, Gary M. Buch, Nathan D. Ampunan, Douglas C. Martin, Bassam S. Shahmurad
  • Patent number: 8738385
    Abstract: Systems and methods for enhancing the quality of an audio signal produced by an audio codec are described herein. In accordance with the systems and methods, a pitch-based pre-filter adaptively filters an input audio signal to produce a filtered audio signal. An audio encoder encodes the filtered audio signal to generate a compressed audio bit stream. An audio decoder decodes the compressed audio bit stream to generate a decoded audio signal. A pitch-based post-filter adaptively filters the decoded audio signal to produce an output audio signal, wherein adaptively filtering the decoded audio signal comprises undoing at least part of a signal-shaping effect of the pitch-based pre-filter.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 29, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 27, 2014
    Assignee: Broadcom Corporation
    Inventor: Juin-Hwey Chen
  • Patent number: 8731904
    Abstract: The present invention deals with an apparatus and method for extracting and analyzing opinions in web documents, wherein automatic extraction and analysis are performed effectively on user opinion information from web documents that are scattered across many websites on the Internet so that opinion search services may be easily implemented which enable search and statistical results to be checked as affirmative/negative opinions, and opinion search users can easily implement a system that helps in searching and monitoring the opinions of other users with respect to a specific keyword.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 23, 2009
    Date of Patent: May 20, 2014
    Assignee: Buzzni
    Inventor: Sang Hyob Nam
  • Patent number: 8731906
    Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for gathering research data that includes information pertaining to audio signals received on a portable device, such as a cell phone. Frequency domain data is received or produced, a signature is extracted from the frequency domain data and an ancillary code is read from the frequency domain data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 11, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 20, 2014
    Assignee: Arbitron Inc.
    Inventor: Alan R Neuhauser
  • Patent number: 8731949
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a method and system for audio encoding and decoding and a method for estimating a noise level, and the method for estimating a noise level in the present invention comprises: estimating a power spectrum of an audio signal to be encoded according to a frequency domain coefficient of the audio signal to be encoded; and estimating a noise level of a zero bit encoding subband audio signal according to the power spectrum obtained by calculating, and this noise level for controlling an energy proportion of noise filling to spectral band replication during decoding; wherein a zero bit encoding subband refers to an encoding subband of which allocated bit number is zero. The present invention can well reconstruct the uncoded frequency domain coefficients.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 20, 2014
    Assignee: ZTE Corporation
    Inventors: Dongping Jiang, Hao Yuan, Ke Peng, Guoming Chen, Jiali Li
  • Patent number: 8731939
    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.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 6, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 20, 2014
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Michael J. Lebeau, John Nicholas Jitkoff, William J. Byrne
  • Patent number: 8719037
    Abstract: Transport apparatus which includes computerized apparatus useful for obtaining and displaying information. In one embodiment, the computerized apparatus includes a network interface, display device, and speech recognition apparatus configured to receive user speech input and enable performance of various tasks via a remote entity, such as obtaining desired information relating to maps or directions, or any number of other topics. The downloaded data may also, in one variant, be displayed with contextually related advertising or other content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 9, 2013
    Date of Patent: May 6, 2014
    Assignee: West View Research, LLC
    Inventor: Robert F. Gazdzinski
  • Patent number: 8719038
    Abstract: Computerized apparatus for obtaining and displaying information, such as for example directions to a desired entity or organization. In one embodiment, the computerized apparatus is configured to receive user speech input and enable performance of various tasks, such as obtaining desired information relating to indoor entities, maps or directions, or any number of other topics. The obtained data may also, in various variants, be displayed in various formats and relative to other entities nearby.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 28, 2013
    Date of Patent: May 6, 2014
    Assignee: West View Research, LLC
    Inventor: Robert F. Gazdzinski
  • Patent number: 8719022
    Abstract: An audio processing system makes use of a number of levels of compression or data reduction, thereby providing reduced storage requirements while maintaining a high accuracy of keyword detection in the original audio input.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 29, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 6, 2014
    Assignee: Nexidia Inc.
    Inventors: Jon A. Arrowood, Robert W. Morris, Peter S. Cardillo, Marsal Gavalda
  • Patent number: 8712777
    Abstract: Methods for obtaining and displaying information, such as directions to a desires entity or organization. In one embodiment, the method makes use of a computerized apparatus configured to receive user speech input and enable performance of various tasks, such as obtaining desired information relating to indoor entities, maps or directions, or any number of other topics. The obtained data may also, in one variant, be displayed with contextually related advertising or other content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 25, 2013
    Date of Patent: April 29, 2014
    Assignee: West View Research, LLC
    Inventor: Robert F. Gazdzinski
  • Patent number: 8706504
    Abstract: Apparatus useful for obtaining and displaying information. In one embodiment, the apparatus includes a network interface, display device, and speech recognition apparatus configured to receive user speech input and enable performance of various tasks via a remote entity, such as obtaining desired information relating to maps or directions, or any number of other topics. The downloaded data may also, in one variant, be displayed with contextually related advertising or other content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 9, 2013
    Date of Patent: April 22, 2014
    Assignee: West View Research, LLC
    Inventor: Robert F. Gazdzinski
  • Patent number: 8706492
    Abstract: A voice recognition terminal executes a local voice recognition process and utilizes an external center voice recognition process. The terminal includes: a voice message synthesizing element for synthesizing at least one of a voice message to be output from a speaker according to the external center voice recognition process and a voice message to be output from the speaker according to the local voice recognition process so as to distinguish between characteristics of the voice message to be output from the speaker according to the external center voice recognition process and characteristics of the voice message to be output from the speaker according to the local voice recognition process; and a voice output element for outputting a synthesized voice message from the speaker.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 22, 2014
    Assignee: DENSO CORPORATION
    Inventors: Kunio Yokoi, Kazuhisa Suzuki, Masayuki Takami, Naoyori Tanzawa
  • Patent number: 8700405
    Abstract: A system includes a hands free mobile communication device. Software stored on a machine readable storage device is executed to cause the hands free mobile communication device to communicate audibly with a field operator performing field operations. The operator receives instructions regarding operations to be performed. Oral communications are received from the operator and are processed automatically to provide further instructions in response to the received oral communications.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 16, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 15, 2014
    Assignee: Honeywell International Inc
    Inventors: Tom Plocher, Emmanuel Letsu-Dake, Robert E. De Mers, Paul Derby
  • Patent number: 8694306
    Abstract: A method of processing a signal, including taking a signal formed from a plurality of source signal emitters and expressed in an original domain, decomposing the signal into a mathematical representation of a plurality of constituent elements in an alternate domain, analyzing the plurality of constituent elements to associate at least a subset of the constituent elements with at least one of the plurality of source signal emitters, separating at least a subset of the constituent elements based on the association and reconstituting at least a subset of constituent elements to produce an output signal in at least one of the original domain, the alternate domain and another domain.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 3, 2013
    Date of Patent: April 8, 2014
    Assignee: Kaonyx Labs LLC
    Inventors: Kevin M. Short, Brian T. Hone
  • Patent number: 8694320
    Abstract: A method of generating audio for a text-only application comprises the steps of adding tag to an input text, said tag is usable for adding sound effect to the generated audio; processing the tag to form instructions for generating the audio; generating audio with said effect based on the instructions, while the text being presented. The present invention adds entertainment value to text applications and provides very compact format compared to conventional multimedia as well as uses entertainment sound to make text-only applications such as SMS and email more fun and entertaining.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 24, 2008
    Date of Patent: April 8, 2014
    Assignee: Nokia Corporation
    Inventor: Ole Kirkeby
  • Patent number: 8694303
    Abstract: A method for tuning translation parameters in statistical machine translation based on ranking of the translation parameters is disclosed. According to one embodiment, the method includes sampling pairs of candidate translation units from a set of candidate translation units corresponding to a source unit, each candidate translation unit corresponding to numeric values assigned to one or more features, receiving an initial weighting value for each feature, comparing the pairs of candidate translation units to produce binary results, and using the binary results to adjust the initial weighting values to produce modified weighting values.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 8, 2014
    Assignee: Language Weaver, Inc.
    Inventors: Mark Hopkins, Jonathan May
  • Patent number: 8681978
    Abstract: Methods, devices, and computer program products enable the embedding of forensic marks in a host content that is in compressed domain. These and other features are achieved by preprocessing of a host content to provide a plurality of host content versions with different embedded watermarks that are subsequently compressed. A host content may then be efficiently marked with forensic marks in response to a request for such content. The marking process is conducted in compressed domain, thus reducing the computational burden of decompressing and re-compressing the content, and avoiding further perceptual degradation of the host content. In addition, methods, devices and computer program products are disclosed that obstruct differential analysis of such forensically marked content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 25, 2014
    Assignee: Verance Corporation
    Inventors: Rade Petriovic, Dai Yang
  • Patent number: 8682674
    Abstract: Provided are methods and systems that extract facts of unstructured documents and build an oracle for various domains. The present invention addresses the problem of efficient finding and extraction of facts about a particular subject domain from semi-structured and unstructured documents, makes inferences of new facts from the extracted facts and the ways of verification of the facts, thus becoming a source of knowledge about the domain to be effectively queried. The methods and systems can also extract temporal information from unstructured and semi-structured documents, and can find and extract dynamically generated documents from Deep or Dynamic Web.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 13, 2013
    Date of Patent: March 25, 2014
    Assignee: Glenbrook Networks
    Inventors: Julia Komissarchik, Edward Komissarchik
  • Patent number: 8682673
    Abstract: A computerized information and display apparatus useful for providing information to a user via a display. In one embodiment, the apparatus comprises a processor and network interface and computer readable medium having at least one computer program disposed thereon, the at least one program being configured to receive a speech input from the user, and obtain information relating to the input. In one variant, at least a portion of the information is obtained via the network interface from a remote server, and the apparatus includes two components in wireless communication with one another.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 27, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 25, 2014
    Assignee: West View Research, LLC
    Inventor: Robert F. Gazdzinski
  • Patent number: 8676569
    Abstract: An error concealment method and apparatus for an audio signal and a decoding method and apparatus for an audio signal using the error concealment method and apparatus. The error concealment method includes selecting one of an error concealment in a frequency domain and an error concealment in a time domain as an error concealment scheme for a current frame based on a predetermined criteria when an error occurs in the current frame, selecting one of a repetition scheme and an interpolation scheme in the frequency domain as the error concealment scheme for the current frame based on a predetermined criteria when the error concealment in the frequency domain is selected, and concealing the error of the current frame using the selected scheme.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 9, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 18, 2014
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
    Inventors: Eun-mi Oh, Ki-hyun Choo, Ho-sang Sung, Chang-yong Son, Jung-hoe Kim, Kang-eun Lee