Speech user interface for portable personal devices
OwnerLauren L'Esperance, Alan Schell +5inventors
InventorsLauren L'Esperance, Alan Schell, Johan Smolders, Erin Hemenway, Piet Verhoeve, Eric Niblack, Mark Goslin
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Abstract
A handheld electronic device such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) has multiple application processes. A speech recognition process takes input speech from a user and produces a recognition output representative of the input speech. A text-to-speech process takes output text and produces a representative speech output. A speech manager interface allows the speech recognition process and the text-to-speech process to be accessed by other application processes.
Claims58
A handheld electronic device having automatic speech recognition, the device comprising:
- a. a speech pre-processor that receives input speech and produces a target signal representative of the input speech;
- b. a database of speaker independent acoustic models, each acoustic model representing a word or subword unit in a recognition vocabulary, each acoustic model being representative of its associated word or subword unit as spoken in a plurality of acoustic environments;
- and
- c. a speech recognizer that compares the target signal to the acoustic models and generates a recognition output of at least one word or subword unit in the recognition vocabulary representative of the input speech.
A handheld electronic device comprising:
- a. a plurality of application processes available for interaction with a user, including:
- i. a speech recognition process that processes input speech from a user, and produces a recognition output representative of the input speech,
- ii. a text-to-speech process that processes output text, and produces a representative speech output, and
- iii. an audio recorder process that processes input audio, and produces a representative audio recording output;
- b. an audio processor including
- i. a microphone module that generates an electrical signal representative of a spoken input from the user, and
- ii. an output module that generates sound intended for the user;
- and
- c. an audio duplexing module responsive to a current state of the device, the duplexing module enabling one module in the processor to operate and disabling the other module from operation.
A handheld electronic device having a plurality of application processes, the device comprising:
- a. a speech recognition process that processes input speech from a user, and produces a recognition output representative of the input speech;
- b. a text-to-speech process that processes output text, and produces a representative speech output;
- c. a speech manager interface that allows the speech recognition process and the text-to-speech process to be accessed by other processes, so as to prevent more than one instantiation of the speech recognition process and one instantiation of the text-to-speech process at any given time.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.