Massachusetts Institute of Technology

International Business Machines Corporation

Comverse, Inc.

Christopher M Schmandt

Paul Brian Moody

Daniel M Gruen

Steven L Rohall

Derek S Lam

Mia Stern

Natalia Marmasse

Lawrence A Denenberg

Stefan Johannes Walter Marti

Hiroshi Ishii

Angela Chang

Erin M Panttaja

Vidya Lakshmipathy

James E Gouldstone

James R Davis

An animatronic telephone agent consisting of a communications subsystem connected to a wired or wireless telephone network for receiving incoming telephone calls, and a robotic automaton coupled to the communications subsystem and responsive to incoming telephone calls for performing different movements that provide non-verbal visual cues to a human observer that are indicative of the status of each incoming call. The automaton preferably takes the form of an animatronic device that has movable appendages and a face with at least movable eyes or eyelids and which provides visual cues by making gestures and/or exhibiting facial expressions that are indicative of the receipt and progress of incoming calls.

Animatronic creatures that act as intermediaries between human users and a telephone system

Apparatus for handling an incoming telephone call including a call processor coupled to a wired or wireless telephone network for receiving an incoming telephone call directed to a called person, a conversation detector for determining whether a conversation is currently taking place between said called person and one or more other persons who are near to said called person, and a call inhibitor for inhibiting the delivery of, delaying or rerouting said incoming call if said conversation detector determines that a conversation is taking place. Each participant in the conversation is provided with a speech detector, and vibrator for producing a tactile alert when incoming calls directed to a participant arrive, and a manually operated control for issuing a veto command that inhibits the delivery of, delays, or reroutes the incoming call so that the conversation is not interrupted.

Methods and apparatus for autonomously managing communications using an intelligent intermediary

The present invention discloses a pre-processing summarization technique that makes use of knowledge specific to the electronic mail domain to pre-process an electronic mail message so that commercially-available document summarization software can subsequently generate a more useful summary from the message. The summarization technique removes extraneous headers, quoted text, forward information, and electronic signatures, leaving more useful text to be summarized. If an enclosing electronic mail thread exists, the summarization technique uses the electronic mail message's ancestors to provide additional context for summarizing the electronic mail message. The disclosed system can be used with IBM Lotus Notes and Domino infrastructure, along with existing single-document summarizer software, to generate a summary of the discourse activity in an electronic mail thread dynamically. The summary may be further augmented to list any names, dates, and names of companies that are present in the electronic mail message being summarized.

System for summarization of threads in electronic mail

Method and apparatus for summarization of threads in electronic mail

A method for exchanging voice messages that may be employed in an answering machine, in wired or wireless telephone, or in an voice messaging system. An incoming voice message from a message source is received and recorded, parsed into segments, and the parsed message is played back to a listener, pausing between each of the parsed segments to accept and record a spoken response from the listener. A reply message is returned to the original message source that includes each such spoken response along with a snippet extracted from the particular segment responded to in the original message. The listener may also interrupt the playback of the voice message at any time to record a response.

Interactive voice message retrieval

A personal communicator with context awareness in a wristwatch form for connecting intimate friends and family via awareness cues and text, voice instant message, or synchronous voice connectivity. Sensors worn with the watch produce raw data tracking location (via GPS), acceleration, and speech activity. The raw data is classified and conveyed to the other party, where it appears in iconic form on the watch face. When a remote person with whom this information is shared examines it, their face appears on the watch of the person being checked on.

Methods and apparatus for connecting an intimate group by exchanging awareness cues and text, voice instant messages, and two-way voice communications

Method for summarization of threads in electronic mail

A device for enhancing interpersonal communication over distance through use of touch. A vibrotactile (touch-and-vibration) interface is used to improve existing remote communication by allowing tactile cues to augment the audio-visual information in real-time. The pressure exerted by each finger of the transmitter produces patterns of vibration against the corresponding finger of the receiver. A hand-held device using the interface allows a user to transmit and receive patterns of vibration to and from a remote user and signify tactile gestures, or expressive uses of touch.

Methods and apparatus for vibrotactile communication

An interactive voice response system is able to respond to questions from users on general topics by including words related to those topics in the grammar of a speech recognition system. Words that are added for all users are obtained from current news reports obtained from news providers accessible via the Internet, or a similar source. In addition, information is stored in an information database about places or people that may be of interest to users, such as weather reports and forecasts for many cities. The grammar of the speech recognition system is modified for an individual user to enable the system to recognize questions relating to, e.g., the weather in one of the cities, only when the system detects that the user has accessed a file containing a word included in the information database. The file may be a message, calendar or address book.

Automatic dynamic speech recognition vocabulary based on external sources of information

The present invention is a system that uses a limited text input entry device to narrow the possibilities for the selection of a phonetically based name used in a voice dialer. The user enters a DTMF signature of a name using only one key for each letter of the name. The signature is used by a dictionary to generate likely possibilities for the word. The user is asked whether the name is the name entered via playing the name to the user. If the user confirms the choice, the phonetic representation is stored along with a corresponding telephone number. If the played word does not match, a word generator generates additional likely possibilities from the signature. A speech recognizer picks the best representation from the dictionary and generator words based on a spoken version of the name. A first name and last name procedure, in which the first and last name signatures produce separate candidate lists, is used to provide an entry to an address book for voice dialing.

System for storing voice recognizable identifiers using a limited input device such as a telephone key pad

An automobile navigation system which provides spoken instructions to the driver of an automobile to guide the driver along a route is disclosed. The heart of the system is a computing apparatus comprising a map database, route finding algorithms, a vehicle location system, discourse generating programs, and speech generating programs. Driver input means allows the driver to enter information such as a desired destination. The route finding algorithms in the computer apparatus calculate a route to the destination. The vehicle location system accepts input from a position sensor which measures automobile movement (magnitude and direction) continuously, and using this data in conjunction with the map database, determines the position of the automobile. Based on the current position of the automobile and the route, the discourse generating programs compose driving instructions and other messages according to a discourse model in real time as they are needed. The instructions and messages are sent to voice generating apparatus which conveys them to the driver.

Growing community of inventors

Milton, MA, United States of America

Christopher M Schmandt