Blackberry Corporation

2236008 Ontario Limited

Blackberry Limited and Qnx Software Systems Limited

Darrin Kenneth John Fry

Jianqiang Shi

Stephen Lau

Xueman Li

Mark Robert Every

Marc Perron

In some examples, a control audio management engine is configured to interact with guest audio services in respective guests that have different audio management capabilities. The control audio management engine receives an indication of a start of a first audio in a first guest of the guests, the indication comprising an audio stream. The control audio management engine sends, to a second guest of the guests, control information to affect playback of a second audio that is playing in the second guest.

Audio management for guests

Voice control in a multi-talker and multimedia environment is disclosed. In one aspect, there is provided a method comprising: receiving a microphone signal for each zone in a plurality of zones of an acoustic environment; generating a processed microphone signal for each zone in the plurality of zones of the acoustic environment, the generating including removing echo caused by audio transducers in the acoustic environment from each of the microphone signals, and removing interference from each of the microphone signals; and performing speech recognition on the processed microphone signals.

Voice control in a multi-talker and multimedia environment

A method and system on an electronic device which uses speech recognition to initiate a communication from a mobile device having access to contact information for a number of contacts. In one example, the method comprises receiving through an audio input interface a voice input for initiating a communication, extracting from the voice input a type of communication and at least part of a contact name, and outputting, to an output interface, a selectable list of all contacts from the contact information which have the part of the contact name and which have a contact address associated with the type of communication. The mobile device may also be configured to access remote contact information from a remote server.

Method of identifying contacts for initiating a communication using speech recognition

A system and method connects multiple diverse publish-subscribe systems and a platform-independent interface that exchanges messages between publishers and subscribers. The system and method connects a software application and the platform-independent interface and exchanges multiple messages between two or more diverse publish-subscribe systems and the software application. The two or more diverse publish-subscribe systems run concurrently.

Platform-independent publish-subscribe

An automatic speech recognition (ASR) system includes at least one processor and a memory storing instructions. The instructions, when executed by the at least one processor cause the system to receive a spoken utterance and convert the spoken utterance into a plurality of recognized speech results through a plurality of automatic speech recognition modules; collect ratings for the recognized speech results by processing the recognized speech results through a plurality of conversation modules; determine that at least two of the collected ratings are equivalent and generate an arbitration recommendation indicating recognized speech results with equivalent collected ratings; and process the arbitration recommendation through one or more of the plurality of conversation modules for selection by one of the one or more of the plurality of conversation modules, wherein the one of the one or more of the plurality of conversation modules is adapted to allow user selection amongst the recognized speech results indicated by the arbitration recommendation. Related methods and computer-readable media are also disclosed.

User-guided arbitration of speech processing results

A system and method to receive a spoken utterance and convert the spoken utterance into a recognized speech results through an automatic speech recognition service. A spoken utterance into a recognized speech result through an automatic speech recognition service. The recognized speech results are interpreted through a natural language processing module. A normalizer processes the recognized speech results that transforms the recognized speech interpretations into predefined form for a given automatic speech recognition domain and further determines which automatic speech recognition domains or the recognized speech results are processed by a dedicated dialogue management proxy module or a conversation module.

Dialogue management

A system and method receives a spoken utterance and converts the spoken utterance into recognized speech results through automatic speech recognition modules. The system and method renders a composite recognition speech result comprising the recognized speech results joined in a return function. The system and method interprets the recognized speech results joined in a return function from each of the automatic speech recognition modules through multiple conversation modules.

Unified N-best ASR results

Methods and electronic devices for facilitating communication are described. In one example, the present application describes processor-implemented method. The method includes: receiving an audio signal; determining that the audio signal includes a voice command to communicate with a contact using a first communication type; and determining that communication with the contact using the first communication type is unavailable; and after determining that communication with the contact using the first communication type is unavailable, facilitating communication with the contact using a second communication type.

Contact prioritized communication for voice commands

A system and method to receive a spoken utterance and convert the spoken utterance into a recognized speech results through multiple automatic speech recognition modules. Multiple conversation modules interpret the recognized speech results. The system and method assign an affinity status to one or more of the multiple automatic speech recognition modules. An affinity status restricts the conversion of a subsequent spoken utterance to a selected automatic speech recognition module or modules.

Recognition module affinity

A method of initiating a communication using speech recognition on a mobile wireless communication device. Voice input is parsed using speech recognition to identify and extract a name and a communication type to be initiated from a plurality of potential communication types. A local address book is searched to identify all contact records having both a contact name including the name extracted from the voice input and a populated address field associated with the communication type extracted from the voice input. When only one contact record matches the extracted information, a communication is automatically initiated to the contact address from the populated address field of the contact record using an application associated with the communication type. When more than one contact record in the local address book matches the extracted information, a list of all of the matching contacts is output from which a communication can be initiated.

An application services interface system includes an automatic speech recognition control application program interface that receives a request for a recognition session from an application-based automatic speech recognition controller. An automatic speech recognition control engine directs the performance of an automatic speech recognition module. The automatic speech recognition module compares a spoken utterance to a vocabulary of active grammars to generate recognition results through limited data interchanges or exchanges.

Application services interface to ASR

These teachings provide for receiving from a user (via, for example, a voice-recognition component) a name-based identifier for an entity to be contacted via wireless communications and then using that name-based identifier to access a contacts list to identify a corresponding communications address to use when contacting the entity via the wireless communications. Upon determining that the contacts list includes at least two contacts having the same name-based identifier, these teachings then provide for providing to the user location information as pertains to at least one of the candidate contacts to thereby facilitate disambiguation.

Growing community of inventors

Kanata, Canada

Darrin Kenneth John Fry