Did You Know...
...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
PatentStorm News
Make the Most of Our Site
See this month's Top Inventors and Most Cited Patents.
Stay on top of the latest innovations by subscribing to an RSS feed.
Registered users: Manage your profile.
| Application No. | Application Title | Issue Date |
| 20120053944 | Method for Determining Compressed State Sequences A compressed state sequence s is determined directly from the input sequence of data x. A deterministic function ƒ(x) only tracks unique state transitions, and not the dwell times in each state. A polynomial time compressed state sequence inference method outperforms c... | 03/01/2012 |
| 20120053945 | BELIEF TRACKING AND ACTION SELECTION IN SPOKEN DIALOG SYSTEMS An action is performed in a spoken dialog system in response to a user's spoken utterance. A policy which maps belief states of user intent to actions is retrieved or created. A belief state is determined based on the spoken utterance, and an action is selected based on... | 03/01/2012 |
| 20120041763 | RECOGNIZING THE NUMERIC LANGUAGE IN NATURAL SPOKEN DIALOGUE A system and a method are provided. A speech recognition processor receives unconstrained input speech and outputs a string of words. The speech recognition processor is based on a numeric language that represents a subset of a vocabulary. The subset includes a set of w... | 02/16/2012 |
| 20100312561 | Information Processing Apparatus, Information Processing Method, and Computer Program An apparatus and a method for performing a grounding process using the POMDP are provided. The configuration is designed so that, in order to understand a request from a user through the utterances from the user, a grounding process is performed using the POMDP (Partial... | 12/09/2010 |
| 20100217599 | Computer Implemented Method for Determining All Markov Boundaries and its Application for Discovering Multiple Maximally Accurate and Non-Redundant Predictive Models Methods for discovery of a Markov boundary from data constitute one of the most important recent developments in pattern recognition and applied statistics, primarily because they offer a principled solution to the variable/feature selection problem and give insight abo... | 08/26/2010 |
| 20100049519 | Recognizing the Numeric Language in Natural Spoken Dialogue A system and a method are provided. A speech recognition processor receives unconstrained input speech and outputs a string of words. The speech recognition processor is based on a numeric language that represents a subset of a vocabulary. The subset includes a set of w... | 02/25/2010 |
| 20090313025 | Automatic Segmentation in Speech Synthesis A method and system are disclosed that automatically segment speech to generate a speech inventory. The method includes initializing a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) using seed input data, performing a segmentation of the HMM into speech units to generate phone labels, corre... | 12/17/2009 |
| 20080300879 | FACTORIAL HIDDEN MARKOV MODEL WITH DISCRETE OBSERVATIONS A method for analyzing hidden dynamics, includes acquiring discrete observations, each discrete observation having an observed value selected from two or more allowed discrete values. A factorial hidden Markov model (FHMM) relating the discrete observations with a plura... | 12/04/2008 |
| 20080300880 | MULTI-LINGUAL OUTPUT DEVICE This application discloses A multi-lingual output device for output of transactional information for a given customer, the device that includes a data base for determining what transaction information needs to be outputted, the local language in which the information is... | 12/04/2008 |
| 20080201136 | Apparatus and Method for Speech Recognition A speech recognition apparatus includes a first storing unit configured to store a first acoustic model invariable regardless of speaker and environment, a second storing unit configured to store a classification model that has shared parameters and non-shared parameter... | 08/21/2008 |
| 20080183472 | SPEECH RECOGNITION SYSTEM AND PROGRAM THEREOF Speech recognition is performed by matching between a characteristic quantity of an inputted speech and a composite HMM obtained by synthesizing a speech HMM (hidden Markov model) and a noise HMM for each speech frame of the inputted speech by use of the composite HMM.... | 07/31/2008 |
| 20080172233 | System and Method for Recognizing Speech Securely A system and method recognizes speech securely. The system includes a client and a server, The client is configured to provide securely speech in a form of an observation sequence of symbols, and the server is configured to provide securely a multiple trained hidden Mar... | 07/17/2008 |
| 20080162129 | METHOD AND APPARATUS PERTAINING TO THE PROCESSING OF SAMPLED AUDIO CONTENT USING A MULTI-RESOLUTION SPEECH RECOGNITION SEARCH PROCESS One provides (101) a plurality of frames of sampled audio content and then processes (102) that plurality of frames using a speech recognition search process that comprises, at least in part, searching for at least two of state boundaries, subword boundari... | 07/03/2008 |
| 20080162128 | METHOD AND APPARATUS PERTAINING TO THE PROCESSING OF SAMPLED AUDIO CONTENT USING A FAST SPEECH RECOGNITION SEARCH PROCESS One provides (101) a plurality of frames of sampled audio content and then processes (102) that plurality of frames using a speech recognition search process that comprises, at least in part, determining whether to search each subword boundary contained wi... | 07/03/2008 |
| 20080059184 | Calculating cost measures between HMM acoustic models Measurement of Kullback-Leibler Divergence (KLD) between hidden Markov models (HMM) of acoustic units utilizes an unscented transform to approximate KLD between Gaussian mixtures. Dynamic programming equalizes the number of states between HMMs having a different number ... | 03/06/2008 |
| 20080059185 | Speech recognition system for mobile terminal A speech recognition system for a mobile terminal includes an acoustic variation channel unit and a pronunciation channel unit. The acoustic variation channel unit transforms a speech signal into feature parameters and Viterbi-decodes the speech signal to produce a vari... | 03/06/2008 |
| 20080059183 | Parsimonious modeling by non-uniform kernel allocation A multi-state pattern recognition model with non-uniform kernel allocation is formed by setting a number of states for a multi-state pattern recognition model and assigning different numbers of kernels to different states. The kernels are then trained using training dat... | 03/06/2008 |
| 20080052075 | Incrementally regulated discriminative margins in MCE training for speech recognition A method and apparatus for training an acoustic model are disclosed. A training corpus is accessed and converted into an initial acoustic model. Scores are calculated for a correct class and competitive classes, respectively, for each token given the acoustic model. Fro... | 02/28/2008 |
| 20080052074 | System and method for speech separation and multi-talker speech recognition A method, and a system to execute this method is being presented for the identification and separation of sources of an acoustic signal, which signal contains a mixture of multiple simultaneous component signals. The method represents the signal with multiple discrete s... | 02/28/2008 |
| 20080046245 | Using a discretized, higher order representation of hidden dynamic variables for speech recognition A hidden dynamics value in speech is represented by a higher order, discretized dynamic model, which predicts the discretized dynamic variable that changes over time. Parameters are trained for the model. A decoder algorithm is developed for estimating the underlying ph... | 02/21/2008 |
| 20080004878 | Method and apparatus for generating features through logical and functional operations Embodiments of a feature generation system and process for use in machine learning applications utilizing statistical modeling systems are described. In one embodiment, the feature generation process generates large feature spaces by combining features using logical, ar... | 01/03/2008 |
| 20070282606 | FRAME GOALS FOR DIALOG SYSTEM A frame definition for use by dialog system during an interaction with a user, the frame definition includes at least one data field and at least one goal comprising a Boolean function of one or more filled predicates, each of which takes a reference to a field of the f... | 12/06/2007 |
| 20070203702 | Speech synthesizer, speech synthesizing method, and program A speech synthesizer that provides high-quality sound along with stable sound quality, including: a target parameter generation unit; a speech element DB; an element selection unit; a mixed parameter judgment unit which determines an optimum parameter combination of tar... | 08/30/2007 |
| 20070192104 | A SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING LARGE VOCABULARY SPEECH PROCESSING BASED ON FIXED-POINT ARITHMETIC Disclosed herein is a system, method and computer-readable medium storing instructions for controlling a computing device according to the method. The invention relates to a system, method and computer-readable medium storing instructions for controlling a computing dev... | 08/16/2007 |
| 20070129946 | High quality speech reconstruction for a dialog method and system An electronic device (400) for speech dialog includes functions that receive (405, 205) a speech phrase that includes an instantiated variable (315), generate pitch and voicing characteristics (330) of the instantiated variable, and performs ... | 06/07/2007 |
| 20070083372 | Apparatus and method for controlling portable device An apparatus and method for controlling a portable device. An apparatus for controlling a portable device includes: a touch sensor which comprises at least one touch cell which is chosen by a touch of a user; a first calculation unit which calculates a first probability... | 04/12/2007 |
| 20070083371 | Apparatus and method for recognizing voice An apparatus and method for recognizing voice. The apparatus includes a feature vector extraction unit dividing an input voice signal into predetermined unit regions, and extracting feature vectors corresponding to each of the unit regions; a predicted node extraction u... | 04/12/2007 |
| 20070038451 | Voice recognition for large dynamic vocabularies A voice recognition method includes: representing a vocabulary translated into a Markov network; decoding by means of a Viterbi algorithm; and pruning explored solutions. The vocabulary is described in a tree made up of arcs and of nodes, between which transcriptions ar... | 02/15/2007 |
| 20070005363 | Location aware multi-modal multi-lingual device Location-based technologies (e.g., global position system (GPS)) can be employed to facilitate providing multi-modal, multi-lingual location-based services. Identification of location can provide significant context as to identifying user state and intentions. Thus, loc... | 01/04/2007 |
| 20060287856 | Speech models generated using competitive training, asymmetric training, and data boosting Speech models are trained using one or more of three different training systems. They include competitive training which reduces a distance between a recognized result and a true result, data boosting which divides and weights training data, and asymmetric training whic... | 12/21/2006 |
| 20060190259 | Method and apparatus for recognizing speech by measuring confidence levels of respective frames Disclosed herein is a method and apparatus to recognize speech by measuring the confidence levels of respective frames. The method includes the operations of obtaining frequency features of a received speech signal for the respective frames having a predetermined length... | 08/24/2006 |
| 20060178887 | System for estimating parameters of a gaussian mixture model A signal processing system is disclosed which is implemented using Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based Hidden Markov Model (HMM), or a GMM alone, parameters of which are constrained during its optimization procedure. Also disclosed is a constraint system applied to input... | 08/10/2006 |
| 20060155540 | Method for data training In a method for data training, training is performed using multiple entries of data in a database of web pages, libraries, patent documents, etc., in combination with data selected or labeled by a user. The data training utilizes a scheme based principally on a machine ... | 07/13/2006 |
| 20060129399 | Speech conversion system and method The conversion of speech can be used to transform an utterance by a source speaker to match the speech characteristic of a target speaker. During a training phase, utterances corresponding to the same sentences by both the target speaker can source speaker can be force ... | 06/15/2006 |
| 20060122834 | Emotion detection device & method for use in distributed systems A prosody analyzer enhances the interpretation of natural language utterances. The analyzer is distributed over a client/server architecture, so that the scope of emotion recognition processing tasks can be allocated on a dynamic basis based on processing resources, cha... | 06/08/2006 |
| 20060100872 | PATTERN RECOGNITION APPARATUS AND PATTERN RECOGNITION METHOD A feature amount extracting unit extracts feature amount vectors of an inputted image. A probability distribution calculator calculates a probability distribution of feature amount vectors in a calculation space range which is set by a calculation space range setting un... | 05/11/2006 |
| 20060058999 | Voice model adaptation Voice recognition tutoring software to assist in reading development includes method and system for generating a custom voice model. ... | 03/16/2006 |
| 20060053013 | Selection of a user language on purely acoustically controlled telephone The user language of a device can be set to a user language by speaking the designation of the user language to be set. ... | 03/09/2006 |
| 20060031071 | System and method for automatically implementing a finite state automaton for speech recognition A system and method for automatically implementing a finite state automaton for speech recognition includes a finite state automaton generator that analyzes one or more input text sequences and automatically creates a node table and a link table to define the finite sta... | 02/09/2006 |
| 20050256713 | Asynchronous hidden markov model method and system A system, method and program storage device implementing a method for modeling a data generating process, wherein the modeling comprises observing a data sequence comprising irregularly sampled data, obtaining an observation sequence based on the observed data sequence,... | 11/17/2005 |
