Universal remote control allowing natural language modality...

Data processing: speech signal processing – linguistics – language – Speech signal processing – Application

Reexamination Certificate

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

C704S270100, C704S257000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06553345

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The ubiquitous remote control, often a multitude of them, has found its way onto virtually every coffee table in the television viewing rooms throughout the world. Few television viewers have not experienced the frustration of trying to perform even a simple command, such as turning on the television and watching a pre-recorded movie, only to be thwarted because he or she cannot figure out which button or buttons to press on which remote control units.
In an attempt to address the proliferation of multiple remote controls, many companies offer a universal remote control that is able to operate a variety of different audio-video components. These remote controls, of necessity, feature a panoply of buttons, many of them having dual functions, in order to control the principal functions of all devices in the user's multimedia setup.
While the conventional universal remote control may eliminate the need for having multiple remote control units on the coffee table, it does little to simplify the user's interaction with his or her audio-video or multimedia system. On the contrary most universal remote control units are so complex that they actually impede the user's ability to control the equipment.
The present invention tackles this problem through speech technology recognition and sophisticated natural language parsing components, that allows the user to simply speak into the remote control unit and have his or her commands carried out. While the spoken commands can be simple commands such as “Play VCR” or “Record Channel
6
”, the natural language parser offers far more complex commands than this. For example, the user could speak: “Show me a funny movie starring Marilyn Monroe.” Using the speech recognition and parser components, the system will search through an electronic program guide or movie database and can respond to the user (for instance) that “Some Like It Hot” will be playing next Friday. The user could then, for example, instruct the system to record that movie when it comes on.
Recording commands need not be limited to the entire movie or program. Rather, the user could enter a command such as: “Record the last five minutes of tonight's Toronto-Los Angeles baseball game.” Again, the speech recognition and parser components convert this complex command into a sequence of actions that cause the recording device in the user's system to make the requested recording at the appropriate time.
The remote control of the invention can be constructed as a self-contained unit having all of the parser and speech recognition components on board, or it may be manufactured in multiple components, allowing some of the more complex computational operations to be performed by a processor located in a television set, set top box, or auxiliary multimedia control unit. In the latter case, the hand-held remote and the remote command unit communicate with each other by wireless transmission. Preferably, the hand-held remote control unit includes an infrared port through which the remote control can interact with older equipment in the user's multimedia setup. Thus the remote control of the invention even allows sophisticated natural language speech commands to be given to those older audio-video components.
For a more complete understanding of the invention, its objects and advantages, refer to the following specification and to the accompanying drawings.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5774859 (1998-06-01), Houser et al.
patent: 5878385 (1999-03-01), Bralich et al.
patent: 6246981 (2001-06-01), Papineni et al.
patent: 6324512 (2001-11-01), Junqua et al.
patent: 6330539 (2001-12-01), Takayama et al.
patent: 40 29 697 (1991-07-01), None
patent: 0 838 945 (1998-04-01), None
patent: 1 033 701 (2000-09-01), None
patent: 1 037 463 (2000-09-01), None
patent: WO 97/48230 (1997-12-01), None
patent: WO 98/16062 (1998-04-01), None
Junqua, Jean-Claude and Haton, Jean-Paul; “Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition”; Kluwer Academic Publishers; Norwell, MA; 1996; pp. 353-369.

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for the USA inventors and patents. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Universal remote control allowing natural language modality... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with Universal remote control allowing natural language modality..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Universal remote control allowing natural language modality... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3040239

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.