Distributed endpointing for speech recognition

Abstract

An efficient audio streaming method and apparatus includes a client process implemented on a client or local device and a server process implemented on a remote server or server(s). The client process and server process each have speech recognition components and communicate over a network, and together efficiently manage the detection of speech in an audio signal streamed by the local device to the server for speech recognition and potentially further processing at the server. The client process monitors audio input and in a first detection stage, implements endpointing on the local device to determine when speech is detected. The client process may further determine if a 'wakeword' is detected, and then the client process opens a connection and begins streaming audio to the server process via the network. The server process receives the speech audio stream and monitors the audio, implementing endpointing in the server process, to determine when to tell the client process to close the connection and stop streaming audio. The client process continues streaming audio to the server until the server process determines disconnect criteria have been met and tells the client process to stop streaming audio.