Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Rohit Bhattacharjee

Prashant J Thakare

Shiladitya Roy

Xu Zhang

Nikhil Gupta

Clare Elizabeth Veladanda

Nicholas Adam Cummings

Monty Eich

Veer Yuganter Singh

Sabrina Chandrasekaran

Alekya Jonnala

Sol Jee Cho

David Z Chen

Pranav Kumar Singh

Techniques for resuming a skill session are described. A system receives a user input, determines a skill to execute with respect to the user input, opens a skill session, and causes the skill to execute. After the skill executes, the skill indicates the skill session is to be placed in a background state, resulting in the user being able to conduct one or more skill sessions while the skill processes in the background state. Sometime after placing the skill session in the background state, the skill requests the system to resume the skill session. If the system determines the skill session is to be resumed, the system sends data to the skill indicating that the skill session will be resumed. Once the skill session is to be resumed, the system places the skill session in an active state, and calls the skill to resume processing of the skill session.

Skill session backgrounding and resumption

A speech-processing system may provide access to one or more skills via spoken commands and/or responses in the form of synthesized speech. The system may be capable of keeping one or more skills active in the background while a user interacts (e.g., provides inputs to and/or receives outputs from) with a skill running in the foreground. A background skill may receive some trigger data, and determine to request the system to return the background skill to the foreground to, for example, request a user input regarding an action previously requested by the user. In some cases, the user may invoke a background skill to continue a previous interaction. The system may return the background skill to the foreground. The resumed skill may continue a previous interaction to, for example, to query the user for instructions, provide an update or alert, or continue a previous output.

Task resumption in a natural understanding system

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Vancouver, Canada

Rohit Bhattacharjee