Abstract: This patent application is directed to interaction between a voice-controlled device and a language processing system that processes user requests. The requests can be requests for information or they can be requests to control a device, such as “Turn on the bedroom light.” The disclosure includes various embodiments for trying to resolve system errors in a manner that provides an improved customer experience. The improvements described include the capability of the overall system to recognize that an error has occurred while attempting to fulfill a request that was submitted as part of a recognized spoken utterance. Instead of simply doing nothing, or of playing a message to the customer to try again later, the system would now let the user know it was still processing the request while making another attempt at fulfilling the request.

Abstract: This patent application is directed to interaction between a voice-controlled device and a language processing system that processes user requests. The requests can be requests for information or they can be requests to control a device, such as “Turn on the bedroom light.” The disclosure includes various embodiments for trying to resolve system errors in a manner that provides an improved customer experience. The improvements described include the capability of the overall system to recognize that an error has occurred while attempting to fulfill a request that was submitted as part of a recognized spoken utterance. Instead of simply doing nothing, or of playing a message to the customer to try again later, the system would now let the user know it was still processing the request while making another attempt at fulfilling the request.

Abstract: A system for determining an endpoint of an utterance during automatic speech recognition (ASR) processing that accounts for the direction and duration of the incoming speech. Beamformers of the ASR system may identify a source direction of the audio. The system may track the duration speech has been received from that source direction so that if speech is detected in another direction, the original source speech may be weighted differently for purposes of determining an endpoint of the utterance. Speech from a new direction may be discarded or treated like non-speech for purposes of determining an endpoint of speech from an original direction.