US 10,540,970 B2Granted

Architectures and topologies for vehicle-based, voice-controlled devices

AssigneeAmazon Technologies, Inc.

InventorsDibyendu Nandy, Rangaprabhu Parthasarathy, Snehal G. Joshi, Arvind Mandhani, Dhananjay Motwani, Hans Edward Birch-Jensen, Ambika Pajjuri

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Abstract

This disclosure describes, in part, techniques for implementing voice-enabled devices in vehicle environments to facilitate voice interaction with vehicle computing devices. Due to the differing communication capabilities of existing vehicle computing devices, the techniques described herein describe different communication topologies for facilitating voice interaction with the vehicle computing devices. In some examples, the voice-enabled device may be communicatively coupled to a user device, which may communicate with a remote speech-processing system to determine and perform operations responsive to the voice commands, such as conducting phone calls using loudspeakers of the vehicle computing device, streaming music to the vehicle computing device, and so forth. In this way, the communication topologies between the voice-enabled computing device, the vehicle computing device, and the user device provide for voice control of vehicle computing devices which may otherwise be unable to be controlled by voice commands.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A voice-controlled device disposed in an interior of a vehicle, the voice-controlled device comprising:

a microphone;
a first input/output (I/O) interface to communicatively couple, by a physical communication connection, the voice-controlled device to a second I/O interface of a vehicle computing device of the vehicle, the vehicle computing device coupled to one or more loudspeakers;
one or more processors;
and
computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
capturing, using the microphone, first audio representing a speech utterance;
generating first audio data representing the speech utterance;
sending, using a Bluetooth Low Energy Profile (BLE) of a Bluetooth protocol, the first audio data to a user mobile device, wherein the user mobile device sends the first audio data to a remote speech-processing system;
receiving, from the user mobile device and using an Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) of the Bluetooth protocol, second audio data, wherein the second audio data is received by the user mobile device from a network-based music service, and wherein the remote speech-processing system determines an intent of the speech utterance is to stream the second audio data and sends a command to the user mobile device to stream the second audio data;
and
sending, via the physical communication connection, the second audio data to the vehicle computing device to be output by the one or more loudspeakers of the vehicle computing device.

8 more elements

A method comprising:

generating, by one or more processors of a voice-enabled device, first audio data representing a speech utterance captured by a microphone of the voice-enabled device, the voice-enabled device being disposed in an interior of a vehicle and communicatively coupled to a vehicle computing device associated with the vehicle;
sending, via a personal area network (PAN) and using a first communication protocol, the first audio data to a user device disposed in the interior of the vehicle, wherein the user device sends the first audio data to a remote speech-processing system;
receiving, from the user device, via the PAN, and using a second communication protocol, second audio data associated with an intent of the speech utterance;
and
sending, from the voice-enabled device and to the vehicle computing device, the second audio data.

2 more elements

A computing device comprising:

a microphone;
a loudspeaker;
one or more processors;
computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
capturing, by the microphone, a speech utterance in an environment of the microphone, the computing device being disposed in an interior of a vehicle including a vehicle computing device, the vehicle computing device coupled to one or more loudspeakers;
generating, by the one or more processors of the computing device, first audio data representing the speech utterance;
sending, using a first communication protocol, the first audio data to a user device for sending to a remote speech-processing system, the user device being disposed in the interior of the vehicle;
receiving, from the user device and using the first communication protocol, an indication of a command included in the speech utterance, wherein the command is associated with an intent of the speech utterance;
identifying second audio data associated with the command;
and
outputting, by the loudspeaker, audio corresponding to the second audio data, wherein the user device is sending third audio data to the vehicle computing device using a second communication protocol.

8 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 15/838,878Filed 12 Dec 2017
Published: US 2019/0180740 A113 Jun 2019
Granted: 21 Jan 2020
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification15 codes

G10L 15/22
Speech recognition: procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
G10L 13/02
Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems: methods for producing synthetic speech; Speech synthesisers
G10L 15/08
Speech recognition: speech classification or search
G10L 15/30
Constructional details of speech recognition systems: distributed recognition, e.g. in client-server systems, for mobile phones or network…