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

An electronic device may capture a voice command from a user. The electronic device may store contextual information about the state of the electronic device when the voice command is received. The electronic device may transmit the voice command and the contextual information to computing equipment such as a desktop computer or a remote server. The computing equipment may perform a speech recognition operation on the voice command and may process the contextual information. The computing equipment may respond to the voice command. The computing equipment may also transmit information to the electronic device that allows the electronic device to respond to the voice command.

Electronic Devices with Voice Command and Contextual Data Processing Capabilities

A method for operating a voice trigger is provided. In some implementations, the method is performed at an electronic device including one or more processors and memory storing instructions for execution by the one or more processors. The method includes receiving a sound input. The sound input may correspond to a spoken word or phrase, or a portion thereof. The method includes determining whether at least a portion of the sound input corresponds to a predetermined type of sound, such as a human voice. The method includes, upon a determination that at least a portion of the sound input corresponds to the predetermined type, determining whether the sound input includes predetermined content, such as a predetermined trigger word or phrase. The method also includes, upon a determination that the sound input includes the predetermined content, initiating a speech-based service, such as a voice-based digital assistant.

Voice trigger for a digital assistant

A device can be configured to receive speech input from a user. The speech input can include a command for accessing a restricted feature of the device. The speech input can be compared to a voiceprint (e.g., text-independent voiceprint) of the user's voice to authenticate the user to the device. Responsive to successful authentication of the user to the device, the user is allowed access to the restricted feature without the user having to perform additional authentication steps or speaking the command again. If the user is not successfully authenticated to the device, additional authentication steps can be request by the device (e.g., request a password).

Device access using voice authentication

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and apparatus for searching using an active ontology. One embodiment of a method for searching a database includes receiving a search string, where the search string comprises one or more words, generating a semantic representation of the search string in accordance with an ontology, searching the database using the semantic representation, and outputting a result of the searching.

Method and apparatus for searching using an active ontology

Disclosed are a display apparatus and a method of controlling the display apparatus. The display apparatus includes: a signal receiver configured to receive a broadcasting signal; a display configured to display an image based on the received broadcasting signal; a sound receiver configured to receive a sound spoken by a user; a first sound recognizer configured to be supplied with power when the display apparatus is in a standby mode, and determine whether the received sound is a reserved word candidate having a high probability of corresponding to a reserved word; a second sound recognizer configured to be supplied with power when the received sound is determined as the reserved word candidate and to determine whether the received sound is the reserved word; and a controller configured to control the preset operation to be performed when the received sound is determined as the reserved word.

Electronic apparatus and control method thereof

A method and apparatus for detecting voice activity are disclosed. The method of detecting voice activity includes: extracting a feature parameter from a frame signal; determining whether the frame signal is a voice signal or a noise signal by comparing the feature parameter with model parameters of a plurality of comparison signals, respectively; and outputting the frame signal when the frame signal is determined to be a voice signal. The apparatus includes a classifier module which extracts a feature parameter from a frame signal, and generating labeling information with respect to the frame signal by comparing the feature parameter with model parameters of a plurality of comparison signals; and a voice detection unit which determines whether the frame signal is a noise signal or a voice signal with reference to the labeling information, and outputting the frame signal when the frame signal is determined to be a voice signal.

Method and apparatus for voice activity detection

We examine user-friendly voice interface that requires the hands-free speech acquisition in the continuously listening environment. The traditional voice activity detection (VAD) algorithms cannot successfully identify potential acoustic event sounds from speech. This makes the speech recognition system frequently or incorrectly activated. In this paper, we propose a novel voice activity detection technique that consists of two major modules: 1) classification and 2) detection module. In the classification module, we label the successive audio segments based on the training models. Then, in the detection module, we remove the acoustic event sounds and make decision of the explicit utterance boundary from the input audio stream. As a result, the proposed technique enables the efficient operation of speech recognition in the continuously listening environment without any touch and/or key input. Experiments in a real-world environment and performance comparison with state-of-the-art techniques are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

Enhanced voice activity detection using acoustic event detection and classification

A method for controlling the electronic apparatus including: receiving an input of an audio which includes a user's voice; processing the audio and generating a user voice signal; transmitting the user voice signal to a first server; receiving text information corresponding to the user voice signal from the first server; and controlling the electronic apparatus, according to the text information.

Electronic apparatus and method for controlling electronic apparatus thereof

We propose a source-specific dictionary approach to efficient music representation, and apply it to separation of music signals that coexist with background noise such as speech or environmental sounds. The basic idea is to determine a set of elementary functions, called atoms, that efficiently capture music signal characteristics. There are three steps in the construction of a source-specific dictionary. First, we decompose basic components of musical signals (e.g., musical notes) into a set of source-independent atoms (i.e., Gabor atoms). Then, we prioritize these Gabor atoms according to their approximation capability to music signals of interest. Third, we use the prioritized Gabor atoms to synthesize new atoms to build a compact dictionary. The number of atoms needed to represent music signals using the source-specific dictionary is much less than that of the Gabor dictionary, resulting in a sparse music representation. For the single-channel music signal separation, we project the mixture signal onto source-specific atoms. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the efficiency and applications of the proposed approach.

Namgook Cho

Papers

Electronic apparatus and control method thereof

Method and apparatus for voice activity detection

Enhanced voice activity detection using acoustic event detection and classification

Electronic apparatus and method for controlling electronic apparatus thereof

Sparse Music Representation With Source-Specific Dictionaries and Its Application to Signal Separation