Patents by Inventor Richard William Sproat

Richard William Sproat 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).

  • Publication number: 20180253490
    Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for retrieving audio segments from a spoken document. The spoken document preferably is one having moderate word error rates such as telephone calls or teleconferences. The method comprises converting speech associated with a spoken document into a lattice representation and indexing the lattice representation of speech. These steps are performed typically off-line. Upon receiving a query from a user, the method further comprises searching the indexed lattice representation of speech and returning retrieved audio segments from the spoken document that match the user query.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 7, 2018
    Publication date: September 6, 2018
    Inventors: Murat Saraclar, Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 9965552
    Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for retrieving audio segments from a spoken document. The spoken document preferably is one having moderate word error rates such as telephone calls or teleconferences. The method comprises converting speech associated with a spoken document into a lattice representation and indexing the lattice representation of speech. These steps are performed typically off-line. Upon receiving a query from a user, the method further comprises searching the indexed lattice representation of speech and returning retrieved audio segments from the spoken document that match the user query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 29, 2016
    Date of Patent: May 8, 2018
    Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc.
    Inventors: Murat Saraclar, Richard William Sproat
  • Publication number: 20160179947
    Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for retrieving audio segments from a spoken document. The spoken document preferably is one having moderate word error rates such as telephone calls or teleconferences. The method comprises converting speech associated with a spoken document into a lattice representation and indexing the lattice representation of speech. These steps are performed typically off-line. Upon receiving a query from a user, the method further comprises searching the indexed lattice representation of speech and returning retrieved audio segments from the spoken document that match the user query.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 29, 2016
    Publication date: June 23, 2016
    Inventors: Murat SARACLAR, Richard William SPROAT
  • Patent number: 9286890
    Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for retrieving audio segments from a spoken document. The spoken document preferably is one having moderate word error rates such as telephone calls or teleconferences. The method comprises converting speech associated with a spoken document into a lattice representation and indexing the lattice representation of speech. These steps are performed typically off-line. Upon receiving a query from a user, the method further comprises searching the indexed lattice representation of speech and returning retrieved audio segments from the spoken document that match the user query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 7, 2014
    Date of Patent: March 15, 2016
    Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
    Inventors: Murat Saraclar, Richard William Sproat
  • Publication number: 20140188474
    Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for retrieving audio segments from a spoken document. The spoken document preferably is one having moderate word error rates such as telephone calls or teleconferences. The method comprises converting speech associated with a spoken document into a lattice representation and indexing the lattice representation of speech. These steps are performed typically off-line. Upon receiving a query from a user, the method further comprises searching the indexed lattice representation of speech and returning retrieved audio segments from the spoken document that match the user query.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 7, 2014
    Publication date: July 3, 2014
    Applicant: AT&T Intellectual Property II, LP
    Inventors: Murat Saraclar, Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 8670977
    Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for retrieving audio segments from a spoken document. The spoken document preferably is one having moderate word error rates such as telephone calls or teleconferences. The method comprises converting speech associated with a spoken document into a lattice representation and indexing the lattice representation of speech. These steps are performed typically off-line. Upon receiving a query from a user, the method further comprises searching the indexed lattice representation of speech and returning retrieved audio segments from the spoken document that match the user query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 21, 2011
    Date of Patent: March 11, 2014
    Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
    Inventors: Murat Saraclar, Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 8086028
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method of converting a set of words into a three-dimensional scene description, which may then be rendered into three-dimensional images. The invention may generate arbitrary scenes in response to a substantially unlimited range of input words. Scenes may be generated by combining objects, poses, facial expressions, environments, etc., so that they represent the input set of words. Poses may have generic elements so that referenced objects may be replaced by those mentioned in the input set of words. Likewise, a character may be dressed according to its role in the set of words. Various constraints for object positioning may be declared. The environment, including but not limited to place, time of day, and time of year, may be inferred from the input set of words.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 29, 2009
    Date of Patent: December 27, 2011
    Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
    Inventor: Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 7996224
    Abstract: Systems and methods relate to generating a language model for use in, for example, a spoken dialog system or some other application. The method comprises building a class-based language model, generating at least one sequence network and replacing class labels in the class-based language model with the at least one sequence network. In this manner, placeholders or tokens associated with classes can be inserted into the models at training time and word/phone networks can be built based on meta-data information at test time. Finally, the placeholder token can be replaced with the word/phone networks at run time to improve recognition of difficult words such as proper names.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 29, 2004
    Date of Patent: August 9, 2011
    Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
    Inventors: Michiel A. U. Bacchiani, Sameer Raj Maskey, Brian E. Roark, Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 7912699
    Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for retrieving audio segments from a spoken document. The spoken document preferably is one having moderate word error rates such as telephone calls or teleconferences. The method comprises converting speech associated with a spoken document into a lattice representation and indexing the lattice representation of speech. These steps are performed typically off-line. Upon receiving a query from a user, the method further comprises searching the indexed lattice representation of speech and returning retrieved audio segments from the spoken document that match the user query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 23, 2004
    Date of Patent: March 22, 2011
    Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
    Inventors: Murat Saraclar, Richard William Sproat
  • Publication number: 20100169076
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method of converting a set of words into a three-dimensional scene description, which may then be rendered into three-dimensional images. The invention may generate arbitrary scenes in response to a substantially unlimited range of input words. Scenes may be generated by combining objects, poses, facial expressions, environments, etc., so that they represent the input set of words. Poses may have generic elements so that referenced objects may be replaced by those mentioned in the input set of words. Likewise, a character may be dressed according to its role in the set of words. Various constraints for object positioning may be declared. The environment, including but not limited to place, time of day, and time of year, may be inferred from the input set of words.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 29, 2009
    Publication date: July 1, 2010
    Applicant: AT&T Corp.
    Inventor: Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 7664313
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method of converting a set of words into a three-dimensional scene description, which may then be rendered into three-dimensional images. The invention may generate arbitrary scenes in response to a substantially unlimited range of input words. Scenes may be generated by combining objects, poses, facial expressions, environments, etc., so that they represent the input set of words. Poses may have generic elements so that referenced objects may be replaced by those mentioned in the input set of words. Likewise, a character may be dressed according to its role in the set of words. Various constraints for object positioning may be declared. The environment, including but not limited to place, time of day, and time of year, may be inferred from the input set of words.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 24, 2002
    Date of Patent: February 16, 2010
    Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
    Inventor: Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 6256629
    Abstract: A system and apparatus are disclosed for identifying polysemous terms and for measuring their degree of polysemy. A polysemy index provides a quantitative measure of how polysemous a word is. A list of words can be ranked by their polysemy indices, with the most polysemous words appearing at the top of the list. A polysemy evaluation process collects a set of terms near a target term. Inter-term distances of the set of terms occurring near the target term are computed and the multi-dimensional distance space is reduced to two dimensions. The two dimensional representation is converted into radial coordinates. Isotonic/antitonic regression techniques are used to compute the degree to which the distribution deviates from unimodality. The amount of deviation is the polysemy index. A corpus can be preprocessed using the polysemy indices to identify words having clearly separated senses, allowing an information retrieval system to return a separate list of documents for each sense of a word.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 25, 1998
    Date of Patent: July 3, 2001
    Assignee: Lucent Technologies Inc.
    Inventors: Richard William Sproat, Jan Pieter VanSanten
  • Patent number: 5806032
    Abstract: A method for automatically converting a decision tree into one or more weighted finite-state transducers. Specifically, the method in accordance with an illustrative embodiment of the present invention processes one or more terminal (i.e., leaf) nodes of a given decision tree to generate one or more corresponding weighted rewrite rules. Then, these weighted rewrite rules are processed to generate weighted finite-state transducers corresponding to the one or more terminal nodes of the decision tree. In this manner, decision trees may be advantageously compiled into weighted finite-state transducers, and these transducers may then be used directly in various speech and natural language processing systems. The weighted rewrite rules employed herein comprise an extension of conventional rewrite rules, familiar to those skilled in the art.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 14, 1996
    Date of Patent: September 8, 1998
    Assignee: Lucent Technologies Inc.
    Inventor: Richard William Sproat
  • Patent number: 5781884
    Abstract: The present invention provides a method of expanding a string of one or more digits to form a verbal equivalent using weighted finite state transducers. The method provides a grammatical description that expands the string into a numeric concept represented by a sum of powers of a base number system, compiles the grammatical description into a first weighted finite state transducer, provides a language specific grammatical description for verbally expressing the numeric concept, compiles the language specific grammatical description into a second weighted finite state transducer, composes the first and second finite state transducers to form a third weighted finite state transducer from which the verbal equivalent of the string can be synthesized, and synthesizes the verbal equivalent from the third weighted finite state transducer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 22, 1996
    Date of Patent: July 14, 1998
    Assignee: Lucent Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Fernando Carlos Neves Pereira, Michael Dennis Riley, Richard William Sproat