Patents by Inventor Hugh Evan Secker-Walker
Hugh Evan Secker-Walker has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
-
Patent number: 11900948Abstract: Features are disclosed for automatically identifying a speaker. Artifacts of automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) and/or other automatically determined information may be processed against individual user profiles or models. Scores may be determined reflecting the likelihood that individual users made an utterance. The scores can be based on, e.g., individual components of Gaussian mixture models (“GMMs”) that score best for frames of audio data of an utterance. A user associated with the highest likelihood score for a particular utterance can be identified as the speaker of the utterance. Information regarding the identified user can be provided to components of a spoken language processing system, separate applications, etc.Type: GrantFiled: January 7, 2022Date of Patent: February 13, 2024Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Baiyang Liu, Frederick Victor Weber
-
Patent number: 11398236Abstract: Features are disclosed for generating intent-specific results in an automatic speech recognition system. The results can be generated by utilizing a decoding graph containing tags that identify portions of the graph corresponding to a given intent. The tags can also identify high-information content slots and low-information carrier phrases for a given intent. The automatic speech recognition system may utilize these tags to provide a semantic representation based on a plurality of different tokens for the content slot portions and low information for the carrier portions. A user can be presented with a user interface containing top intent results with corresponding intent-specific top content slot values.Type: GrantFiled: May 21, 2020Date of Patent: July 26, 2022Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Aaron Lee Mathers Challenner, Ariya Rastrow
-
Patent number: 11322152Abstract: Power consumption for a computing device may be managed by one or more keywords. For example, if an audio input obtained by the computing device includes a keyword, a network interface module and/or an application processing module of the computing device may be activated. The audio input may then be transmitted via the network interface module to a remote computing device, such as a speech recognition server. Alternately, the computing device may be provided with a speech recognition engine configured to process the audio input for on-device speech recognition.Type: GrantFiled: June 17, 2019Date of Patent: May 3, 2022Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Kenneth John Basye, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Tony David, Reinhard Kneser, Jeffrey Penrod Adams, Stan Weidner Salvador, Mahesh Krishnamoorthy
-
Patent number: 11222639Abstract: Features are disclosed for automatically identifying a speaker. Artifacts of automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) and/or other automatically determined information may be processed against individual user profiles or models. Scores may be determined reflecting the likelihood that individual users made an utterance. The scores can be based on, e.g., individual components of Gaussian mixture models (“GMMs”) that score best for frames of audio data of an utterance. A user associated with the highest likelihood score for a particular utterance can be identified as the speaker of the utterance. Information regarding the identified user can be provided to components of a spoken language processing system, separate applications, etc.Type: GrantFiled: May 21, 2020Date of Patent: January 11, 2022Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Baiyang Liu, Frederick Victor Weber
-
Patent number: 10970774Abstract: Provided are systems and methods for receiving a plurality of item submissions from a plurality of mobile user devices (each item submission of the plurality of item submissions including: item identifier data indicative of an item; and item location data indicative of a location of the item), determining a determined location for the item (using the respective item location data for each of the plurality of item submissions), and storing the determined location for the item in an item location database. The determined location for the item is stored in association with an item identifier corresponding to the item, and the item location database stores determined locations for a plurality of items.Type: GrantFiled: September 22, 2014Date of Patent: April 6, 2021Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Alborz Geramifard, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker
-
Publication number: 20200388282Abstract: Features are disclosed for generating intent-specific results in an automatic speech recognition system. The results can be generated by utilizing a decoding graph containing tags that identify portions of the graph corresponding to a given intent. The tags can also identify high-information content slots and low-information carrier phrases for a given intent. The automatic speech recognition system may utilize these tags to provide a semantic representation based on a plurality of different tokens for the content slot portions and low information for the carrier portions. A user can be presented with a user interface containing top intent results with corresponding intent-specific top content slot values.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 21, 2020Publication date: December 10, 2020Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Aaron Lee Mathers Challenner, Ariya Rastrow
-
Publication number: 20200349957Abstract: Features are disclosed for automatically identifying a speaker. Artifacts of automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) and/or other automatically determined information may be processed against individual user profiles or models. Scores may be determined reflecting the likelihood that individual users made an utterance. The scores can be based on, e.g., individual components of Gaussian mixture models (“GMMs”) that score best for frames of audio data of an utterance. A user associated with the highest likelihood score for a particular utterance can be identified as the speaker of the utterance. Information regarding the identified user can be provided to components of a spoken language processing system, separate applications, etc.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 21, 2020Publication date: November 5, 2020Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Baiyang Liu, Frederick Victor Weber
-
Patent number: 10811013Abstract: Features are disclosed for generating intent-specific results in an automatic speech recognition system. The results can be generated by utilizing a decoding graph containing tags that identify portions of the graph corresponding to a given intent. The tags can also identify high-information content slots and low-information carrier phrases for a given intent. The automatic speech recognition system may utilize these tags to provide a semantic representation based on a plurality of different tokens for the content slot portions and low information for the carrier portions. A user can be presented with a user interface containing top intent results with corresponding intent-specific top content slot values.Type: GrantFiled: December 20, 2013Date of Patent: October 20, 2020Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Aaron Lee Mathers Challenner, Ariya Rastrow
-
Patent number: 10665245Abstract: Features are disclosed for automatically identifying a speaker. Artifacts of automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) and/or other automatically determined information may be processed against individual user profiles or models. Scores may be determined reflecting the likelihood that individual users made an utterance. The scores can be based on, e.g., individual components of Gaussian mixture models (“GMMs”) that score best for frames of audio data of an utterance. A user associated with the highest likelihood score for a particular utterance can be identified as the speaker of the utterance. Information regarding the identified user can be provided to components of a spoken language processing system, separate applications, etc.Type: GrantFiled: June 21, 2019Date of Patent: May 26, 2020Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Baiyang Liu, Frederick Victor Weber
-
Publication number: 20200043499Abstract: Power consumption for a computing device may be managed by one or more keywords. For example, if an audio input obtained by the computing device includes a keyword, a network interface module and/or an application processing module of the computing device may be activated. The audio input may then be transmitted via the network interface module to a remote computing device, such as a speech recognition server. Alternately, the computing device may be provided with a speech recognition engine configured to process the audio input for on-device speech recognition.Type: ApplicationFiled: June 17, 2019Publication date: February 6, 2020Inventors: Kenneth John Basye, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Tony David, Reinhard Kneser, Jeffrey Penrod Adams, Stan Weidner Salvador, Mahesh Krishnamoorthy
-
Publication number: 20190378517Abstract: Features are disclosed for automatically identifying a speaker. Artifacts of automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) and/or other automatically determined information may be processed against individual user profiles or models. Scores may be determined reflecting the likelihood that individual users made an utterance. The scores can be based on, e.g., individual components of Gaussian mixture models (“GMMs”) that score best for frames of audio data of an utterance. A user associated with the highest likelihood score for a particular utterance can be identified as the speaker of the utterance. Information regarding the identified user can be provided to components of a spoken language processing system, separate applications, etc.Type: ApplicationFiled: June 21, 2019Publication date: December 12, 2019Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Baiyang Liu, Frederick Victor Weber
-
Patent number: 10332525Abstract: Features are disclosed for automatically identifying a speaker. Artifacts of automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) and/or other automatically determined information may be processed against individual user profiles or models. Scores may be determined reflecting the likelihood that individual users made an utterance. The scores can be based on, e.g., individual components of Gaussian mixture models (“GMMs”) that score best for frames of audio data of an utterance. A user associated with the highest likelihood score for a particular utterance can be identified as the speaker of the utterance. Information regarding the identified user can be provided to components of a spoken language processing system, separate applications, etc.Type: GrantFiled: January 30, 2017Date of Patent: June 25, 2019Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Baiyang Liu, Frederick Victor Weber
-
Patent number: 10325598Abstract: Power consumption for a computing device may be managed by one or more keywords. For example, if an audio input obtained by the computing device includes a keyword, a network interface module and/or an application processing module of the computing device may be activated. The audio input may then be transmitted via the network interface module to a remote computing device, such as a speech recognition server. Alternately, the computing device may be provided with a speech recognition engine configured to process the audio input for on-device speech recognition.Type: GrantFiled: July 10, 2017Date of Patent: June 18, 2019Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Kenneth John Basye, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Tony David, Reinhard Kneser, Jeffrey Penrod Adams, Stan Weidner Salvador, Mahesh Krishnamoorthy
-
Patent number: 10320757Abstract: A secure repository receives and stores user data, and shares the user data with trusted client devices. The user data may be shared individually or as part of bundled data relating to multiple users, but in either case, the secure repository associates specific data with specific users. This association is maintained by the trusted client devices, even after the data is altered by processing on the client device. If a user requests a purge of their data, the system deletes and/or disables that data on both the repository and the client devices, as well as deleting and/or disabling processed data derived from that user's data, unless a determination has been made that the processed data no longer contains confidential information.Type: GrantFiled: June 6, 2014Date of Patent: June 11, 2019Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Nitin Sivakrishnan
-
Patent number: 10152973Abstract: Features are disclosed for managing the use of speech recognition models and data in automated speech recognition systems. Models and data may be retrieved asynchronously and used as they are received or after an utterance is initially processed with more general or different models. Once received, the models and statistics can be cached. Statistics needed to update models and data may also be retrieved asynchronously so that it may be used to update the models and data as it becomes available. The updated models and data may be immediately used to re-process an utterance, or saved for use in processing subsequently received utterances. User interactions with the automated speech recognition system may be tracked in order to predict when a user is likely to utilize the system. Models and data may be pre-cached based on such predictions.Type: GrantFiled: November 16, 2015Date of Patent: December 11, 2018Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Bjorn Hoffmeister, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Jeffrey Cornelius O'Neill
-
Patent number: 10102851Abstract: Incremental speech recognition results are generated and used to determine a user's intent from an utterance. Utterance audio data may be partitioned into multiple portions, and incremental speech recognition results may be generated from one or more of the portions. A natural language understanding module or some other language processing module can generate semantic representations of the utterance from the incremental speech recognition results. Stability of the determined intent may be determined over the course of time, and actions may be taken in response to meeting certain stability thresholds.Type: GrantFiled: August 28, 2013Date of Patent: October 16, 2018Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Imre Attila Kiss, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker
-
Publication number: 20180096689Abstract: Power consumption for a computing device may be managed by one or more keywords. For example, if an audio input obtained by the computing device includes a keyword, a network interface module and/or an application processing module of the computing device may be activated. The audio input may then be transmitted via the network interface module to a remote computing device, such as a speech recognition server. Alternately, the computing device may be provided with a speech recognition engine configured to process the audio input for on-device speech recognition.Type: ApplicationFiled: July 10, 2017Publication date: April 5, 2018Inventors: Kenneth John Basye, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Tony David, Reinhard Kneser, Jeffrey Penrod Adams, Stan Weidner Salvador, Mahesh Krishnamoorthy
-
Patent number: 9922650Abstract: Features are disclosed for generating intent-specific results in an automatic speech recognition system. The results can be generated by utilizing a decoding graph containing tags that identify portions of the graph corresponding to a given intent. The tags can also identify high-information content slots and low-information carrier phrases for a given intent. The automatic speech recognition system may utilize these tags to provide a semantic representation based on a plurality of different tokens for the content slot portions and low information for the carrier portions. A user can be presented with a user interface containing top intent results with corresponding intent-specific top content slot values.Type: GrantFiled: December 20, 2013Date of Patent: March 20, 2018Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Aaron Lee Mathers Challenner, Ariya Rastrow
-
Patent number: 9864576Abstract: A voice controlled assistant having a housing to hold one or more microphones, one or more speakers, and various computing components. The voice controlled assistant facilitates transactions and other functions primarily through verbal interactions with a user. In some situations, a transaction may require entry of a code, which the user may wish to enter in a non-verbal way. The voice controlled assistant is configured to analyze an audio signal to detect user interactions with the surface of the voice controlled assistant and to interpret the detected interactions as entry of the code.Type: GrantFiled: September 9, 2013Date of Patent: January 9, 2018Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.Inventors: Baiyang Liu, Hugh Evan Secker-Walker
-
Patent number: 9818407Abstract: An efficient audio streaming method and apparatus includes a client process implemented on a client or local device and a server process implemented on a remote server or server(s). The client process and server process each have speech recognition components and communicate over a network, and together efficiently manage the detection of speech in an audio signal streamed by the local device to the server for speech recognition and potentially further processing at the server. The client process monitors audio input and in a first detection stage, implements endpointing on the local device to determine when speech is detected. The client process may further determine if a “wakeword” is detected, and then the client process opens a connection and begins streaming audio to the server process via the network.Type: GrantFiled: February 7, 2013Date of Patent: November 14, 2017Assignee: AMAZON TECHNOLOGIES, INC.Inventors: Hugh Evan Secker-Walker, Kenneth John Basye, Nikko Strom, Ryan Paul Thomas