Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Intel-ge Care Innovations LLC

Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.p.

Digital Equipment Corporation

Jean-Manuel Van Thong

Beth Teresa Logan

Pedro J Moreno

Leonidas Kontothanassis

David Goddeau

Bradford H Needham

Amir Bar-Or

James Lundell

Michael Labhard

Davis Pan

Sherif Yacoub

Gretchen Anderson

Keith Waters

William D Goldenthal

Ben Foss

Michael Swain

Frank C Bomba

Jeff Witt

Edward Whittaker

Ernest Pusateri

John Burns

In some embodiments, a reading device is provided with a shortcut read mode in which a user can instruct the reading device of the type of document (e.g., invoice, package label, newspaper, etc.) that is to be read so that the device can more efficiently find and read back to the user desired (target) information from the document.

Reading device with shortcut read function

A system provides assisted living messages with varying levels of detail to a person, according to proximity gradients. In one embodiment, the system involves location data. The location data associates first and second notification devices with respective first and second locations at a dwelling. A remote configuration module may enable a caregiver at a location other than the dwelling to specify multiple messages to be presented to the person at the dwelling, to assign first and second messages among the multiple messages to the first location, and to associate the first and second messages with first and second proximities, respectively, for the first location. The first notification device may automatically present the first message in response to detecting the person within the first proximity, and the second message in response to detecting the person within the second proximity. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Remotely configurable assisted-living notification system with gradient proximity sensitivity

Motion detecting devices may be used to help monitor and guide human subjects interacting with objects. An activity monitoring station may receive an interaction schedule for a human subject. The schedule may list objects with which the human subject is scheduled to interact. The station may receive motion data from a motion detecting device worn by the subject and a device situated on or in an object. The station may generate a motion alignment score, based on the motion data, and may determine that the subject has interacted with the object, based on the alignment score. The station may also automatically determine whether the interaction is an approved interaction or a disapproved interaction, based on the schedule. The station may automatically cause an approval or disapproval signal to be generated for the human subject. Interaction reports may be generated and transmitted to caregivers. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Methods and apparatus for monitoring and guiding human subjects interacting with objects

A method for shedding signal load in a network having a plurality of devices is disclosed herein. The method comprises computer-implemented steps of (a) issuing a load-shedding policy, where the policy includes (i) fraction f of the signal to be discarded; (ii) device D where fraction f of the signal is to be discarded; and (iii) pattern P of discarding fraction f of the signal; (b) transmitting the issued load-shedding policy to device D; and (c) discarding portions of the signal at device D according to pattern P until fraction f of the signal is discarded.

Method and system for shedding load in physiological signals processing

A method of load-shedding in a system having a plurality of signal sources is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of: (a) for each signal source Sselected from a set of sources {S, S, . . . }, each source having state pselected from a set of states {p, p, . . . , p; p, p, . . . , p; . . . }, wherein i is an integer greater than one, N is an integer not less than two and k is an integer from 1 to N: (i) obtaining fractions f, wherein each 0&#x2266;f&#x3c;1 is a fraction of a signal from source Sto be discarded if source Sis in state p; and (ii) determining respective state pof signal source Sbased on the signal from source S; and (b) for each source signal Sin determined state p, discarding fraction fof a signal from source S.

State-based load shedding for physiological signals

An article is extracted from a document using a decision combiner to process a plurality of reading order alternatives. The text flow analysis generates the plurality of reading order alternatives of separate body text regions.

Article extraction

A computer method and system synchronizes one streaming data signal with another data signal. A subject data signal and working data signal are received. The working data signal has predefined coordinates in a coordinate system (e.g., time origin and unit sampling rate in a time coordinate system for audio). The subject data signal and working data signal are transformed into respective common representations. An alignment process aligns the respective transformed representations by matching the transformed representation of the working data signal to that of the subject signal. A re-synchronizer element transposes the predefined coordinates of the working data signal onto the subject signal in the aligned state of the respective transformed representations. As such, the subject data signal is synchronized to the coordinate system of the working data signal.

Content-based synchronization method and system for data streams

A speech recognition system provides a subword decoder and a dictionary lookup to process a spoken input. In a first stage of processing, the subword decoder decodes the speech input based on subword units or particles and identifies hypothesized subword sequences using a particle dictionary and particle language model, but independently of a word dictionary or word vocabulary. Further stages of processing involve a particle to word graph expander and a word decoder. The particle to word graph expander expands the subword representation produced by the subword decoder into a word graph of word candidates using a word dictionary. The word decoder uses the word dictionary and a word language model to determine a best sequence of word candidates from the word graph that is most likely to match the words of the spoken input.

Vocabulary independent speech recognition system and method using subword units

An electronic document searching system or word searching system which when given an input, expands the input as a function of acoustic similarity and/or word sequence occurrence frequency. Results of the system are alternative input words or phrases. The alternative input words or phrases are output from the system for further processing.

Method to expand inputs for word or document searching

A computer-based detection (e.g., speech recognition) system combines a word decoder and subword decoder to detect words (or phrases) in a spoken input provided by a user into a speaker connected to the detection system. The word decoder detects words by comparing an input pattern (e.g., of hypothetical word matches) to reference patterns (e.g., words). The subword decoder compares an input pattern (e.g., hypothetical words matches based on subword or phoneme recognition) to reference patterns (e.g., words) based on a word pronunciation distance measure that indicates how close each input pattern is to matching each reference pattern. The subword decoder sorts the source set of reference patterns based on a closeness of each reference pattern to correctly matching the input pattern based on generated pattern comparisons. The word decoder and subword decoder each provide an N-best list of hypothetical matches to the spoken input. A list fusion module of the detection system selectively combines the two N-best lists to produce a final or combined N-best list. The final or combined list has a predefined number of matches.

Systems and methods for combining subword recognition and whole word recognition of a spoken input

Disclosed is a five-step process for producing closed captions for a television program, subtitles for a movie or other uses for time-aligned transcripts. An operator transcribes the audio track while listening to the recorded material. The system helps him/her to work efficiently and produce precisely aligned captions. The first step consists of identifying the portions of the input audio that contain spoken text. Only the spoken parts are further processed by the invention system. The other parts may be used to generate non-spoken captions. The second step controls the rate of speech depending on how fast the operator types. While the operator types, the third module records the time the words were typed in. This provides a rough time alignment for the transcribed text. Then the fourth module realigns precisely the transcribed text on the audio track. A final module segments the transcribed text into captions, based on acoustic clues and natural language constraints. Further, the speech rate-control component of the system may be used in other systems where transcripts are required to be generated from spoken audio.

Efficient method for producing off-line closed captions

The disclosed method and apparatus controls the rate of playback of audio data corresponding to a stream of speech. Using speech recognition, the rate of speech of the audio data is determined. The determined rate of speech is compared to a target rate. Based on the comparison, the playback rate is adjusted, i.e. increased or decreased, to match the target rate.

Apparatus and method for controlling rate of playback of audio data

A method and apparatus are provided for refining time alignments of closed captions. The method automatically aligns closed caption data with associated audio data such that the closed caption data can be more precisely indexed to a requested keyword by a search engine. Further, with such a structure, the closed captions can be made to appear and disappear on a display screen in direct relation to the associated spoken words and phrases. Accordingly, hearing impaired viewers can more easily understand the program that is being displayed.

Method for refining time alignments of closed captions

In a computerized method, speech signals are analyzed using statistical trajectory modeling to produce time aligned acoustic-phonetic units. There is one acoustic-phonetic unit for each portion of the speech signal determined to be phonetically distinct. The acoustic-phonetic units are translated to corresponding time aligned image units representative of the acoustic-phonetic units. An image including the time aligned image units is displayed. The display of the time aligned image units is synchronized to a replaying of the digitized natural speech signal.

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Arlington, MA, United States of America

Jean-Manuel Van Thong