Abstract: Principles of the present invention provide techniques for automatically navigating through a telephone menu system. Illustrative techniques of the invention permit a user of a telephone menu system (e.g., IVR system) to record operations needed to navigate to a particular point in a menu tree of the telephone menu system and to either gather information or perform a transaction at that menu point. The information or transaction status may be reported to the user. Part of the act of training may be the association of a command with the navigation operations, after which the automated telephone menu navigation system of the invention will repeat the procedure, in correct synchrony with the telephone menu service, when the user says the command. In addition, the techniques of the invention detect failure or loss of synchronization or changes in the telephone menu.

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for overcoming errors in speech recognition systems. For example, a technique for processing acoustic data in accordance with a speech recognition system comprises the following steps/operations. Acoustic data is obtained in association with the speech recognition system. The acoustic data is recorded using a combination of a first buffer area and a second buffer area, such that the recording of the acoustic data using the combination of the two buffer areas at least substantially minimizes one or more truncation errors associated with operation of the speech recognition system.

Abstract: A conversational computing system that provides a universal coordinated multi-modal conversational user interface (CUI) 10 across a plurality of conversationally aware applications (11) (i.e., applications that “speak” conversational protocols) and conventional applications (12). The conversationally aware applications (11) communicate with a conversational kernel (14) via conversational application APIs (13). The conversational kernel 14 controls the dialog across applications and devices (local and networked) on the basis of their registered conversational capabilities and requirements and provides a unified conversational user interface and conversational services and behaviors. The conversational computing system may be built on top of a conventional operating system and APIs (15) and conventional device hardware (16). The conversational kernel (14) handles all I/O processing and controls conversational engines (18).

Abstract: Principles of the present invention provide techniques for automatically navigating through a telephone menu system. Illustrative techniques of the invention permit a user of a telephone menu system (e.g., IVR system) to record operations needed to navigate to a particular point in a menu tree of the telephone menu system and to either gather information or perform a transaction at that menu point. The information or transaction status may be reported to the user. Part of the act of training may be the association of a command with the navigation operations, after which the automated telephone menu navigation system of the invention will repeat the procedure, in correct synchrony with the telephone menu service, when the user says the command. In addition, the techniques of the invention detect failure or loss of synchronization or changes in the telephone menu.

Abstract: A system and method for recognizing commands and voice data in a same utterance includes decoding voice data to identify words or phrases in an utterance and determining those word or phrase acoustic boundaries within the utterance voice data. One or more commands are found in the utterance and segments based on the acoustic boundaries of the one or more commands are labeled. Portions of the utterance that are not part of a command are retained as voice data. The one or more commands found in the utterance are executed. Command execution may include changing recognizer vocabulary to facilitate recognizing the words or phrases in the residue voice data or the residue voice data may be retained for other uses.

Abstract: An apparatus for imaging the mouth of a user while detecting the speech of the user. The apparatus includes a headset. A video camera mounted to the headset is positioned so as to capture a frontal view of the mouth of a user. A microphone mounted to the headset is positioned so as to detect the speech of the user. An illumination source illuminates the mouth of the user. A communication device transmits the output of the video camera and the output of the microphone to a computer.