Virtual assistant configured by selection of wake-up phrase

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10217453-B2
Application number	US-201615294234-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 14, 2016
Priority date	Oct 14, 2016
Publication date	Feb 26, 2019
Grant date	Feb 26, 2019

Abstract

A speech-enabled dialog system responds to a plurality of wake-up phrases. Based on which wake-up phrase is detected, the system's configuration is modified accordingly. Various configurable aspects of the system include selection and morphing of a text-to-speech voice; configuration of acoustic model, language model, vocabulary, and grammar; configuration of a graphic animation; configuration of virtual assistant personality parameters; invocation of a particular user profile; invocation of an authentication function; and configuration of an open sound. Configuration depends on a target market segment. Configuration also depends on the state of the dialog system, such as whether a previous utterance was an information query.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of configuring a computerized dialog system, the method comprising:
receiving a request including an indication of which of a plurality of wake-up phrases has been detected;
identifying a knowledge domain associated with the detected wake-up phrase from the plurality of wake-up phrases; and
configuring a text-to-speech (TTS) system, responsive to receiving the request, to use the identified knowledge domain to respond to the request.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of configuring includes assigning speech morphing parameters.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising configuring a language model.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising configuring an ASR acoustic model.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising configuring a natural language grammar.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising configuring a graphic animation.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising configuring personality parameters.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising invoking a particular user profile.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising participating in an authentication function.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising configuring an open sound.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of configuring varies depending on the state of the dialog system.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein a TTS voice is unavailable in a particular state.

13. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing code that, if executed by one or more computers would cause the one or more computers to:
receive an indication of which of a plurality of wake-up phrases associated with a virtual agent has been detected;
identify a knowledge domain associated with the detected wake-up phrase from the plurality of wake-up phrases; and
configure a text-to-speech (TTS) system to use the identified knowledge domain to respond to a request.

14. A system for hosting virtual assistant plugins, the system comprising:
a digital storage medium for storing a plurality of a text-to-speech (TTS) voices;
a network interface enabled to receive indications of which of a plurality of wake-up phrases has been detected; and
a processing device enabled to identify a knowledge domain associated with the detected wake-up phrase and configure one of the plurality of TTS voices based on a received indication to use the identified knowledge domain to respond to a request.

15. A voice-enabled device comprising at least one non-transitory computer readable medium storing code that, when executed by one or more processors, would cause the device to:
spot for a plurality of wake-up phrases; and
responsive to detecting a wake-up phrase from the plurality of wake-up phrases:
retrieve open sound audio data;
identify a knowledge domain associated with the detected wake-up phrase;
configure the device to use the identified knowledge domain to respond to requests; and
output the open sound audio data.

16. The device of claim 15 , wherein the open sound audio data is stored by the device.

17. The device of claim 15 wherein the retrieving comprises sending to a server an indication of which of the wake-up phrases was detected and the open sound audio data is retrieved from the server.

18. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing code that, if executed by one or more computers, would cause the one or more computers to:
associate one wake-up phrase with each of a plurality of plugins resulting in a plurality of wake-up phrases;
spot one of the plurality of wake-up phrases;
invoke a first plugin associated with the spotted wake-up phrase, wherein the first invoked plugin acts as a virtual assistant
identify a knowledge domain associated with the spotted wake-up phrase;
configure the first invoke plugin to use the identified knowledge domain to cause the one our more computers to respond to requests.

19. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18 , wherein invoking the first plugin causes the one or more computers to execute code that accesses a web API that provides the functionality of the virtual assistant.

20. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18 , wherein the one or more computers is caused to:
spot a second one of the plurality of wake-up phrases; and
invoke a second plugin associated with second spotted wake-up phrase, wherein the second invoked plugin is different from the first invoked plugin.

Assignees

• Soundhound Inc

Inventors

• Stevans Mark
• Almudafar-Depeyrot Monika
• Mohajer Keyvan

Classifications

• G10L15/26

  Speech to text systems (G10L15/08 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G10L2015/025

  Phonemes, fenemes or fenones being the recognition units · CPC title

• G10L15/30

  Distributed recognition, e.g. in client-server systems, for mobile phones or network applications · CPC title

• G10L2015/088

  Word spotting · CPC title

• G10L15/18

  using natural language modelling · CPC title