Spoken language understanding based on buffered keyword spotting and speech recognition

A system for spoken language understanding, the system comprising:

• a buffer for electronically storing audio signals;
• a key-phrase detector circuit to detect a user spoken key-phrase included in an initial segment of an audio signal, the initial segment stored in the buffer;
• and
• an automatic speech recognition (ASR) circuit;
• the key-phrase detector circuit further to trigger the ASR circuit, in response to the key-phrase detection;
• the ASR circuit to recognize speech based on the buffered initial segment and further based on additional received segments of the audio signal, the additional received segment including further speech of the user;
• and
• the ASR circuit further to determine an endpoint of the recognized speech, the endpoint determination requiring at least one of the additional received segments to be received after the key-phrase.

At least one non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, result in the following operations for spoken language understanding, the operations comprising:

• detecting a user spoken key-phrase included in an initial segment of an audio signal, the initial segment stored in a buffer;
• triggering an automatic speech recognition (ASR) in response to the key-phrase detection;
• recognizing speech based on the buffered initial segment and further based on additional received segments of the audio signal, the additional received segment including further speech of the user;
• and
• determining an endpoint of the recognized speech, the endpoint determination requiring at least one of the additional received segments to be received after the key-phrase.