Voice-enabled directory look-up based on recognized spoken initial characters

Abstract

A novel voice-enabled directory look-up system is disclosed. In one embodiment, an operator reads the first few characters from each of the first and last names of a mail addressee. The system captures the speech as an audio signal, which is parsed into character position segments. The system determines one or more candidate characters that might have resulted in the audio signal for each character position segment. The system then expands the list of candidate characters for at least one character position to include one or more characters that sound like the original candidate characters for that character position. The candidate characters for the respective character positions are composed into a regular expression, which is applied using an inexact string matching look-up routine to a directory of records. Records with the best matches are returned in a menu for the operator. The operator selects the desired record from the menu. In another embodiment, an operator reads aloud the thousands and hundreds digits of the street number and the first three letters of the street name from a mail piece. A voice engine parses and decodes the speech into candidate characters for each character position. The system selects alternative characters that sound similar to candidate characters in a given character position. An inexact string matching routine retrieves records from a carrier route directory that match either a candidate character or an alternative character in each position of each data field.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.