An intelligent automated assistant system engages with the user in an integrated, conversational manner using natural language dialog, and invokes external services when appropriate to obtain information or perform various actions. The system can be implemented using any of a number of different platforms, such as the web, email, smartphone, and the like, or any combination thereof. In one embodiment, the system is based on sets of interrelated domains and tasks, and employs additional functionally powered by external services with which the system can interact.

Intelligent Automated Assistant

Media objects are transformed into active, connected objects via identifiers embedded into them or their containers. In the context of a user's playback experience, a decoding process extracts the identifier from a media object and possibly additional context information and forwards it to a server. The server, in turn, maps the identifier to an action, such as returning metadata, re-directing the request to one or more other servers, requesting information from another server to identify the media object, etc. The linking process applies to broadcast objects as well as objects transmitted over networks in streaming and compressed file formats.

Connected audio and other media objects

The various methods and devices described herein relate to devices which, in at least certain embodiments, may include one or more sensors for providing data relating to user activity and at least one processor for causing the device to respond based on the user activity which was determined, at least in part, through the sensors. The response by the device may include a change of state of the device, and the response may be automatically performed after the user activity is determined.

Automated Response to and Sensing of User Activity in Portable Devices

A virtual assistant uses context information to supplement natural language or gestural input from a user. Context helps to clarify the user's intent and to reduce the number of candidate interpretations of the user's input, and reduces the need for the user to provide excessive clarification input. Context can include any available information that is usable by the assistant to supplement explicit user input to constrain an information-processing problem and/or to personalize results. Context can be used to constrain solutions during various phases of processing, including, for example, speech recognition, natural language processing, task flow processing, and dialog generation.

Using context information to facilitate processing of commands in a virtual assistant

A method for detecting against unauthorized transmission of digital works comprises the steps of maintaining a registry of information permitting identification of digital copyrighted works, monitoring a network for transmission of at least one packet-based digital signal, extracting at least one feature from the at least one digital signal, comparing the extracted at least one feature with registry information and applying business rules based on the comparison result.

Copyright detection and protection system and method

A system for encoding audio signals, transmitting or recording the encoded audio signals, and then decoding the transmitted audio signal includes a circuit for determining the block length of the input audio signals based upon detected values of predetermined portions of the input signal and then performing an orthogonal conversion of the determined block length signal, in which the signal is orthogonally transformed from a time-domain signal to a frequency-domain signal. Following quantization, the converted and encoded signal is transmitted and upon performing reverse quantization, a reverse orthogonal converting circuit converts the signal back to the time-domain in keeping with the signal providing information concerning the various block lengths that were determined during encoding. The converted time-domain signals are then connected into a smooth waveform to form output audio signals.

Signal encoding and signal decoding apparatus

A process of identifying a speaker in coded speech data and a process of searching for the speaker are efficiently performed with fewer computations and with a smaller storage capacity. In an information search apparatus, an LSP decoding section extracts and decodes only LSP information from coded speech data which is read for each block. An LPC conversion section converts the LSP information into LPC information. A Cepstrum conversion section converts the obtained LPC information into an LPC Cepstrum which represents features of speech. A vector quantization section performs vector quantization on the LPC Cepstrum. A speaker identification section identifies a speaker on the basis of the result of the vector quantization. Furthermore, the identified speaker is compared with a search condition in a condition comparison section, and based on the result, the search result is output.

Information detection apparatus and method, and information search apparatus and method

Provided is a sensor in which a current sensor that detects a current of a power line as a change in a magnetic field and a voltage sensor that detects a voltage of the power line using capacitive coupling are integrally formed. The transmission of signals related to substantially the same sections is omitted in order to effectively compress an output signal from the sensor and an output signal from the voltage sensor. When the amplitude and phase of a fundamental wave which are estimated from the output signal from the sensor and the amplitude and phase of harmonics are encoded, the amplitude and phase of the harmonics are relativized with a value for the fundamental wave.

Sensor, sensor signal processor, and power line signal encoder

A speech encoding method and apparatus and an audio signal encoding method and apparatus in which the processing volume in calculating a weight value for perceptually weighted vector quantization may be decreased to speed up the processing or to relieve the load on hardware. To this end, an inverted LPC filter 111 finds LPC (linear prediction coding) residuals of an input speech signal which are processed with sinusoidal analysis encoding by a sinusoidal analysis encoding unit 114. The resulting parameters are processed by a vector quantizer 116 with perceptually weighted vector quantization. For this perceptually weighted vector quantization, the weight value is calculated based on results of orthogonal transform of parameters derived from the impulse response of the transfer function of the weight.

Speech encoding method and apparatus, and sound signal encoding method and apparatus

A highlight portion is detected to a high accuracy from acoustic signals in say an event, and an index is added to the highlight portion. In an acoustic signal processing apparatus 10 , a candidate domain extraction unit 13 retains a domain, a length of which with short-term amplitudes as calculated by an amplitude calculating unit 11 not being less than an amplitude threshold value is not less than a time threshold value, as a candidate domain. A feature extraction unit 14 extracts sound quality featuring quantities, relevant to the sound quality, from the acoustic signals, to quantify the sound quality peculiar to a climax. A candidate domain evaluating unit 15 calculates a score value, indicating the degree of the climax, using featuring quantities relevant to the amplitude or the sound quality for each candidate domain, in order to detect a true highlight domain, based on the so calculated score value. An index generating unit 16 generates and outputs an index including the start and end positions and the score values of the highlight domain.

Masayuki Nishiguchi

Papers

Signal encoding and signal decoding apparatus

Information detection apparatus and method, and information search apparatus and method

Sensor, sensor signal processor, and power line signal encoder

Speech encoding method and apparatus, and sound signal encoding method and apparatus

Acoustic signal processing apparatus and method, signal recording apparatus and method and program