Voice-activated interactive speech recognition device and method

A voice-activated speech recognition apparatus, comprising:

• a sound signal input unit that receives a sound and translates the received sound into digital form;
• a speech recognition CPU having an active mode and a sleep mode, comprising:
• a sound signal analyzer in communication with said sound signal input unit to generate voice feature parameters for the received digitized input sound, when said speech recognition CPU is in the active mode;
• a phrase detector in communication with said sound signal analyzer to determine whether the feature parameters substantially match speech reference template information corresponding to pre-registered expressions and generate phrase detection data in response thereto, when said speech recognition CPU is in the active mode;
• and
• a speech comprehension interaction controller in communication with said phrase detector to recognize a meaning from the received digitized input sound based on the received phrase detection data and conversation content and to formulate an appropriate response corresponding to the recognized meaning, when said speech recognition CPU is in the active mode;
• and
• a low power consuming input sound signal power detector in communication with said sound signal input unit and said speech recognition CPU, wherein, when said speech recognition CPU is in the sleep mode, said input sound signal power detector remains active and determines whether the received input sound exceeds a threshold volume for at least a predetermined time period, and wherein said input signal power detector enables said speech recognition CPU, if the received input sound exceeds the threshold volume for at least the predetermined time period, to determine whether the received input sound contains at least one keyword recognized by said speech recognition CPU as an activation command, and cooperates in placing said speech recognition CPU in the active mode if said speech recognition CPU determines that the received input sound contains the at least one keyword that corresponds to an activation command.