Google Inc.

Matthew Nicholas Stuttle

Sebastian Dörner

Alexandra Gherghina

Chandrasekhar Thota

Salvatore Scellato

Ioannis Agiomyrgiannakis

Robert William Hamilton

Byungha Chun

Hassan Mansoor

Christian Brunschen

Tyrone Nicholas

Federico Asara

Evelyn Kim

Samreen Dhillon

Joanna Franciszka Swietlicka

Richard Michael Farrell

A location management system identifies points of interest that may be of interest to one or more users. The location management system defines a geofence boundary encompassing a particular point of interest. When the location management system determines that the user device is inside the geofence boundary&#x2014;but not, for example, when the location management system determines that the user determines that the user device is outside the geofence boundary&#x2014;the location management system instructs the user device to determine wireless signals available to the user device. The location management system then receives wireless signal data from the user device for available wireless signals. By matching the received wireless signal data to known wireless signals available at the identified points of interest, the location management system determines that the user device (and hence the user) is at the point of interest.

Energy-efficient location determination

A group recommendation provides end users in a social group a set of recommended destinations based on the combined personal preferences of the members of the social group. Members of a social group are identified using a combination of location based signals and social graph information in response to receiving a recommendation request. The group recommendation may be determined by combining the personal preferences associated with each member of the group into a master preference profile. Alternatively, the group recommendation may be determined by first calculating an individual recommendation list for each member of the social group and then calculating a composite score for each recommendation on the individual recommendation lists.

Social where next suggestion

A system and method for providing destination recommendations to a user based on mining of a location history. The location history provides information on locations visited by users of the system over time. The system mines the location history to identify location pairs. Each location pair comprises an originating location visited by a user and a next location that was visited by the user within a defined time threshold of visiting the originating location. The system aggregates location pairs by common originating location. The system then takes into account the current location of a requesting user. The system uses the current location information to identify a corresponding originating location in a location history index. The system provides recommendations based at least in part on how frequently certain next locations were visited after visiting the originating location.

Where to go next via mined trails

Disclosed are apparatus and methods for generating synthesized utterances related to output of commands. A command is received at a computing device. A textual output for the command is determined using the computing device. A spoken output of the computing device is generated that utilizes a plurality of vocal characteristic sets. At least a portion of the spoken output corresponds to the textual output. At least a first part of the spoken output utilizes vocal characteristics of a first vocal characteristic set. At least a second part of the spoken output utilizes vocal characteristics of a second vocal characteristic set, where at least some of the vocal characteristics of the first vocal characteristic set differ from the vocal characteristics of the second vocal characteristic set.

Use text to speech techniques to improve understanding when announcing search results

Methods and systems for adaptation of synthetic speech in an environment are described. In an example, a device, which may include a text-to-speech (TTS) module, may be configured to determine characteristics of an environment of the device. The device also may be configured to determine, based on the one or more characteristics of the environment, speech parameters that characterize a voice output of the text-to-speech module. Further, the device may be configured to process a text to obtain the voice output corresponding to the text based on the speech parameters to account for the one or more characteristics of the environment.

Methods and systems for adaptation of synthetic speech in an environment

Disclosed are apparatus and methods for generating synthesized utterances. A computing device can receive speech data corresponding to spoken utterances of a particular speaker. Textual elements of an input text corresponding to the speech data can be recognized. Confidence levels associated with the recognized textual elements can be determined. Speech-synthesis parameters of decision trees can be adapted based on the speech data, recognized textual elements, and associated confidence levels. Each adapted decision tree can map individual elements of a text to individual of the speech-synthesis parameters. A second input text can be received. The second input text can be mapped to speech-synthesis parameters using the adapted decision trees. A synthesized spoken utterance can be generated corresponding to the second input text using the speech-synthesis parameters. At least some of the speech-synthesis parameters are configured to simulate the particular speaker.

Growing community of inventors

Haywards Heath, United Kingdom

Matthew Nicholas Stuttle