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!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7158934 | Speech recognition with feedback from natural language processing for adaptation of acoustic model A speech processing system including a speech recognition unit to receive input speech, and a natural language processor. The speech recognition unit performs speech recognition on input speech using acoustic models to produce a speech recognition result. The natura... | 01/02/2007 |
| 7158935 | Method and system for predicting problematic situations in a automated dialog The invention concerns a system and method of predicting problematic dialogs in an automated dialog system based on the user's input communications. The method may include determining whether a probability of conducting a successful dialog with the user exceeds a fi... | 01/02/2007 |
| 7158499 | Voice-operated two-way asynchronous radio A method and apparatus for communicating audio messages uses a two-way radio. An output audio message is asynchronously transmitted by generating a first acoustic signal in an input device of the radio. A determination is made whether the first acoustic signal is a ... | 01/02/2007 |
| 7155427 | Configurable search tool for finding and scoring non-exact matches in a relational database A computer-implemented method of searching for exact and non-exact matches in a first database includes steps of transforming and standardizing values of selected attributes stored in the first database according to selected first transformation functions while main... | 12/26/2006 |
| 7155392 | Context free grammar engine for speech recognition system The present invention includes a context-free grammar (CFG) engine which communicates through an exposed interface with a speech recognition engine. The context-free grammar engine, in one illustrative embodiment, handles loading and unloading of grammars, as well a... | 12/26/2006 |
| 7155391 | Systems and methods for speech recognition and separate dialect identification A speech-to-text conversion system. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system comprises a computer system, an attached microphone assembly, and speech-to-text conversion software. The two-way speech recognition and dialect system includes a database of diale... | 12/26/2006 |
| 7155388 | Method and apparatus for characterizing inhalation noise and calculating parameters based on the characterization A method for characterizing inhalation noise within a pressurized air delivery system, the method including the steps of: generating an inhalation noise model (912, 1012) based on inhalation noise; receiving an input signal (802) that includes inhalati... | 12/26/2006 |
| 7152057 | Utilizing information redundancy to improve text searches Architecture for improving text searches using information redundancy. A search component is coupled with an analysis component to rerank documents returned in a search according to a redundancy values. Each returned document is used to develop a corresponding word ... | 12/19/2006 |
| 7152031 | Construction, manipulation, and comparison of a multi-dimensional semantic space A directed set can be used to establish contexts for linguistic concepts: for example, to aid in answering a question, to refine a query, or even to determine what questions can be answered given certain knowledge. A directed set includes a plurality of elements and... | 12/19/2006 |
| 7151864 | Information research initiated from a scanned image media A device scans text of an image media and generates text data corresponding to the scanned text. A research component of the device generates a phrase list from the text data and initiates research for information corresponding to the phrase list. ... | 12/19/2006 |
| 7149695 | Method and apparatus for speech recognition using semantic inference and word agglomeration A method and apparatus for command recognition using semantic inference and word agglomeration is described herein. According to one aspect of the present invention, a method for recognizing a voice command comprises recognizing a sequence of words received as the v... | 12/12/2006 |
| 7149691 | System and method for remotely experiencing a virtual environment A virtual environment system includes an acoustic localizer for detecting the location of sound sources in a local environment, a user data I/O device, a remote data I/O device in a remote world, and a system controller in data communication with the acoustic locali... | 12/12/2006 |
| 7149687 | Method of active learning for automatic speech recognition State-of-the-art speech recognition systems are trained using transcribed utterances, preparation of which is labor-intensive and time-consuming. The present invention is an iterative method for reducing the transcription effort for training in automatic speech reco... | 12/12/2006 |
| 7146381 | Information organization and collaboration tool for processing notes and action requests in computer systems A natural language-based information organization and collaboration tool for a computer system is disclosed. The system includes an apparatus and method for processing text expressions in a computer system. The apparatus comprises a user input device for receiving a... | 12/05/2006 |
| 7146320 | Electronic mail replies with speech recognition A method for responding to an electronic mail message with a limited input device such as a phone includes audibly rendering the question and a set of proposed answers typically provided in the electronic mail message by the sender of the electronic mail message. A ... | 12/05/2006 |
| 7146319 | Phonetically based speech recognition system and method A speech recognition method includes a step of receiving a phonetic sequence output by a phonetic recognizer. The method also includes a step of matching the phonetic sequence with one of a plurality of reference phoneme sequences stored in a reference list that mat... | 12/05/2006 |
| 7146308 | Discovery of inference rules from text The present invention provides a facility for discovering a set of inference rules, such as “X is author of Y≈X wrote Y”, “X solved Y≈X found a solution to Y”, and “X caused Y≈Y is triggered by X”, by analyzing a corpus of natural language text. Th... | 12/05/2006 |
| 7143034 | Dynamic time warping device for detecting a reference pattern having a smallest matching cost value with respect to a test pattern, and speech recognition apparatus using the same Provided are a dynamic time warping device using speech recognition software, and a speech recognition apparatus using the same. The dynamic time warping device includes memory units for processing characterization vectors of a test pattern and a predetermined refer... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7143036 | Ranking parser for a natural language processing system A natural language parse ranker of a natural language processing (NLP) system employs a goodness function to rank the possible grammatically valid parses of an utterance. The goodness function generates a statistical goodness measure (SGM) for each valid parse. The ... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7143040 | Interactive dialogues An interactive dialogue apparatus generates prompts and receives responses which it processes and stores response data. Progress of the dialogue is controlled using a state model which is parsed, comparing transition conditions with the stored response data, stoppin... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7143037 | Spelling words using an arbitrary phonetic alphabet Words are spelled by receiving recognizable words from a user of an interactive voice response system. The first letter of each recognizable word is identified, and a spelling is determined based on the first letters of the recognizable words. Statistics for previou... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7143035 | Methods and apparatus for generating dialog state conditioned language models Techniques are provided for generating improved language modeling. Such improved modeling is achieved by conditioning a language model on a state of a dialog for which the language model is employed. For example, the techniques of the invention may improve modeling ... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7143027 | Sentence realization system for use with unification grammars The present invention is a method and system for identifying or realizing an output sequence using a grammar that can be used to encode semantic representation of the output. A goal incorporating a semantic representation is obtained and rules in the grammar are ide... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7142646 | Voice mail integration with instant messenger A method for providing a message to a called party through a network comprised of both a telephone network and a data network, and at least one gateway device connected to both the telephone network and the data network. The method performed by the gateway device in... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7139714 | Adjustable resource based speech recognition system A real-time speech recognition system includes distributed processing across a client and server for recognizing a spoken query by a user. Both the client and server can dedicate a variable number of processing resources for performing speech recognition functions. ... | 11/21/2006 |
| 7139717 | System for dialog management A spoken dialog system having a dialog management module is disclosed. The dialog management module includes a plurality of dialog motivators for handling various operations during a spoken dialog. The dialog motivators comprise error-handling, disambiguation, assum... | 11/21/2006 |
| 7139709 | Middleware layer between speech related applications and engines The present invention provides an application-independent and engine-independent middleware layer between applications and engines. The middleware provides speech-related services to both applications and engines, thereby making it far easier for application vendors... | 11/21/2006 |
| 7139706 | System and method of developing automatic speech recognition vocabulary for voice activated services A comprehensive system is provided for designing a voice activated user interface (VA UI) having a semantic and syntactic structure adapted to the culture and conventions of spoken language for the intended users. The system poses, to at least one respondent, a hypo... | 11/21/2006 |
| 7139369 | Interface and method of designing an interface A method of designing an interface system that allows users to map the representation of their task directly to the interface. There are three major phases to the Customer-Centric Approach to Interface Design (C-CAID). End-users' tasks are categorized to determine t... | 11/21/2006 |
| 7137126 | Conversational computing via conversational virtual machine A conversational computing system that provides a universal coordinated multi-modal conversational user interface (CUI) (10) across a plurality of conversationally aware applications (11) (i.e., applications that “speak” conversational protocols) a... | 11/14/2006 |
| 7136854 | Methods and apparatus for providing search results in response to an ambiguous search query Methods and apparatus consistent with the invention allow a user to submit an ambiguous search query and to receive relevant search results. In one embodiment, a sequence of numbers received from a user of a standard telephone keypad is translated into a set of pote... | 11/14/2006 |
| 7136819 | Interactive multimedia book An interactive multimedia book provides hands-on multimedia instruction to the user in response to voiced commands. The book is implemented on a computer system and includes both text and audio/video clips. The interactive multimedia book is accessed by voiced comma... | 11/14/2006 |
| 7127394 | Assigning meanings to utterances in a speech recognition system Assigning meanings to spoken utterances in a speech recognition system. A plurality of speech rules is generated, each of the of speech rules comprising a language model and an expression associated with the language model. At one interval (e.g. upon the detection o... | 10/24/2006 |
| 7127402 | Method and apparatus for converting utterance representations into actions in a conversational system A conversation manager processes a spoken utterance from a user of a computer that is directed to an application program hosted on the computer. The conversation manager includes a reasoning facility which accesses goal-directed rules stored in a rules base (e.g., d... | 10/24/2006 |
| 7127398 | Interactive system, interactive method, two-way interactive system, two-way interactive method and recording medium The present invention includes a microphone 1 inputting voice uttered by a user; a voice recognition processing section 3 recognizing the voice inputted by the microphone 1, and converting the recognized voice into an input symbol string; a conv... | 10/24/2006 |
| 7127397 | Method of training a computer system via human voice input A method of training a computer system via human voice input from a human teacher is provided. In one embodiment, the method includes presenting a text spelling of an unknown word and receiving a human voice pronunciation of the unknown word. A phonetic spelling of ... | 10/24/2006 |
| 7127395 | Method and system for predicting understanding errors in a task classification system This invention concerns a method and system for monitoring an automated dialog system for the automatic recognition of language understanding errors based on a user's input communications in a task classification system. The method may include determining whether th... | 10/24/2006 |
| 7127393 | Dynamic semantic control of a speech recognition system A method and apparatus are provided for automatically recognizing words of spoken speech using a computer-based speech recognition system according to a dynamic semantic model. In an embodiment, the speech recognition system recognizes speech and generates one or mo... | 10/24/2006 |
| 7124080 | Method and apparatus for adapting a class entity dictionary used with language models A method and apparatus are provided for augmenting a language model with a class entity dictionary based on corrections made by a user. Under the method and apparatus, a user corrects an output that is based in part on the language model by replacing an output segme... | 10/17/2006 |
| 7124074 | Method and apparatus for providing improved HMM POS tagger for multi-word entries and factoids A method of calculating trigram path probabilities for an input string of text containing a multi-word-entry (MWE) or a factoid includes tokenizing the input string to create a plurality of parse leaf units (PLUs). A PosColumn is constructed for each word, MWE, fact... | 10/17/2006 |
