The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 20, 2026
Filed:
Mar. 28, 2024
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA (US);
Wai Chung Chu, San Jose, CA (US);
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA (US);
Abstract
A system can operate a speech-controlled device to perform user engagement detection (UED) processing to detect when speech represented in audio data is directed to the device. For example, the device may extract audio features from the audio data and process these audio features using a classifier to estimate an orientation of the user's head, which may be used as a proxy for user engagement. Thus, if the head orientation is within an engagement zone (which varies based on distance to the user), the device may determine that the user is engaged with the device and perform language processing on input speech. In contrast, if the head orientation is outside of the engagement zone, the device may determine that the user is not engaged and ignore the input speech. To enable additional functionality, the classifier may optionally output a coarse estimate of the head orientation along with the UED determination.