Sony Deutschland Gmbh

Sony International (Europe) Gmbh

Other

Silke Goronzy

Ralf Kompe

Thomas Kemp

Peter Buchner

Krzysztof Marasek

Raquel Tato

Yin Hay Lam

Zica Valsan

Martin Emele

Sunna Torge

Robert Mencl

Stefan Rapp

Helmut Wais

Christian Hying

Naoto Iwahashi

Helmut Lucke

Franck Giron

A user profile and/or the suggestions computed based thereon are obtained taking a special set of user features into account. The user features are defined to represent a typical general behaviour of an individual user in respect to the application where the user profile is used. In other words, for each application where a user profile is used a special set of user features are defined which are able to represent a typical general behaviour of an individual user. Based on these user features the weights in the list of word-weight pairs or weighted keywords which represents the user profile are computed or influenced during the creation of the user profile, and/or a mufti-user profile is split during the creation of an individual user profile from a mufti-user profile, and/or during specification of a suggestion a user history which is used to create the user profile, and/or the user profile, and/or the suggestion results are filtered.

Methods to create a user profile and to specify a suggestion for a next selection of a user

An apparatus for automatic dissection of segmented audio signals, wherein at least one information signal for identifying programs included in said audio signals and for identifying contents included in said programs. Content detection device detects programs and contents belonging to the respective programs in the information signal. Program weighting device weights each program includes in the information signal based on the contents of the respective program detected by the content detection device. Program ranking device indentifies programmers of the same category and ranking said programs based on a weighting result for each program provided by the program weighting device.

Apparatus and method for automatic dissection of segmented audio signals

An audio data segmentation apparatus for segmenting of audio data including for supplying audio data, dividing the audio data supplied into audio clips of a predetermined length, discriminating the audio clips into predetermined audio classes, the audio classes identifying a kind of audio data included in the respective audio clip and segmenting for segmenting the audio data into audio meta patterns based on a sequence of audio classes of consecutive audio clips, each meta pattern being allocated to a predetermined type of contents of the audio data. It is difficult to achieve good results with known methods for segmentation of audio data into meta patterns since the rules for the allocation of the meta patterns are dissatisfying. This problem is solved by the inventive audio data segmentation apparatus further including a program database including program data units to identify a certain kind of program, a plurality of respective audio meta patterns being allocated to each program data unit, wherein the segmenting segments the audio data into corresponding audio meta patterns on the basis of the program data units of the program database

Apparatus and method for segmentation of audio data into meta patterns

A user profile and/or the suggestions computed based thereon are obtained taking a special set of user features into account. The user features are defined to represent a typical general behaviour of an individual user in respect to the application where the user profile is used. In other words, for each application where a user profile is used a special set of user features are defined which are able to represent a typical general behaviour of an individual user. Based on these user features the weights in the list of word-weight pairs or weighted keywords which represents the user profile are computed or influenced during the creation of the user profile, and/or a multi-user profile is split during the creation of an individual user profile from a multi-user profile, and/or during specification of a suggestion a user history which is used to create the user profile, and/or the user profile, and/or the suggestion results are filtered.

To increase the recognition rate and quality in a process of recognizing speech an approximative set of pronunciation rules (APR) for a current pronunciation (CP) of a current speaker is determined in a given pronunciation space (PS) and then applied to a current pronunciation lexicon (CL) so as to perform a speaker specific adaptation of said current lexicon (CL).

Method for recognizing speech using eigenpronunciations

A method for recognizing speech is proposed wherein the process of recognition is started using the starting acoustic model (SAM) and wherein the current acoustic model (CAM) is modified by removing or cancelling model function mixture components (MFM) which are negligible for the description of the speaking behavior and quality of the current speaker. Therefore, the size of the acoustic model (SAM, CAM) is reduced by adaptation to the current speaker enabling fast performance and increased recognition efficiency.

Recognizing speech by selectively canceling model function mixture components

To avoid an over-adaptation of a current acoustic model (CAM) to certain and frequently occuring words for speech phrases during on-line speaker adaptation of speech recognizers it is suggested to count adaptation numbers (a) for each of said speech phrases (SPj) as numbers of times in that a distinct speech phrase (SPj) has been used as a basis for adapting said current acoustic model (CAM) and further to make the strength of adaptation of the current acoustic model (CAM) on the basis of said distinct speech phrase (SPj) dependent on its specific adaptation number (a) so as to decrease the influence of frequent speech phrases (SPj) in the received speech flow on the adaptation process.

Method for recognizing speech to avoid over-adaptation during online speaker adaptation

To prevent adaptation to misrecognized words in unsupervised or on-line automatic speech recognition systems confidence measures are used or the user reaction is interpreted to decide whether a recognized phoneme, several phonemes, a word, several words or a whole utterance should be used for adaptation of the speaker independent model set to a speaker adapted model set or not and, in case an adaptation is executed, how strong the adaptation with this recognized utterance or part of this recognized utterance should be performed. Furtheron, a verification of the speaker adaptation performance is proposed to secure that the recognition rate never decreases (significantly), but only increases or stays at the same level.

Semi-supervised speaker adaptation

According to the present invention network devices that can be controlled via a speech unit included in the network can send a device-document describing its functionality and its speech interface to said speech unit. The speech unit combines those documents to a general document that forms the basis to translate recognized user-commands into user-network-commands to control the connected network-devices. A device-document comprises at least the vocabulary and the commands associated therewith for the corresponding device. Furtheron, pronunciation, grammar for word sequences, rules for speech understanding and dialog can be contained in such documents as well as the same information for multiple languages or information for dynamic dialogs in speech understanding. It is possible that one device contains several documents and dynamically sends them to the speech unit in case they are needed. Furtheron, the present invention enables a device to change its functionality dynamically based on changing content, since a network device send its specifications regarding its speech capabilities to the speech unit while the speech unit is in use.

Merging of speech interfaces from concurrent use of devices and applications

Home networks low-cost digital interfaces are introduced that integrate entertainment, communication and computing electronics into consumer multimedia. Normally, these are low-cost, easy to use systems, since they allow the user to remove or add any kind of network devices with the bus being active. To improve the user interface a speech unit ( ) is proposed that enables all devices ( ) connected to the bus system ( ) to be controlled by a single speech recognition device. The properties of this device, e.g. the vocabulary can be dynamically and actively extended by the consumer devices ( ) connected to the bus system ( ). The proposed technology is independent from a specific bus standard, e.g. the IEEE 1394 standard, and is well-suited for all kinds of wired wireless home networks. The speech unit ( ) receives data and messages from the device. The speech unit ( ) recognizes speaker-dependent commands. A Speech synthesizer synthesizes messages. A remotely controllable device ( ) has access to a medium which may be a CD-ROM. The device may ask for a logical name or identifier.

Growing community of inventors

Fellbach-Schmiden, Germany

Silke Goronzy