|Publication number||US7062297 B2|
|Application number||US 09/908,630|
|Publication date||Jun 13, 2006|
|Filing date||Jul 20, 2001|
|Priority date||Jul 21, 2000|
|Also published as||US20020039913, WO2002009397A2, WO2002009397A3|
|Publication number||09908630, 908630, US 7062297 B2, US 7062297B2, US-B2-7062297, US7062297 B2, US7062297B2|
|Inventors||Sten Minör, Magnus Tillgren, Patrik Olsson|
|Original Assignee||Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson (Publ)|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (21), Non-Patent Citations (1), Referenced by (7), Classifications (27), Legal Events (6)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
THe present invention relates to communication systems, and in particular to methods of communicating with a network.
Access to data networks, for example the internet, is typically achieved using a conventional personal computer (PC) terminal, which has a large high resolution display and relatively high data transmission bandwidth. In order to communicate with the network concerned the user of the PC typically inputs a network address via a keyboard or other input device, such as a mouse. These devices enable long and complex network addresses to be input to the PC relatively easily so that network locations may be accessed.
A recent development in network, and particularly the internet, access is the standardization of a wireless application protocol (WAP), using the so-called “wireless markup language (WML)”. The WAP system enables terminals with small displays, limited processing power and low data transmission bandwidth (for example digital mobile telephones and similar devices) to access and control services and content in a network such as the internet. WAP is a layered communications protocol that includes network layers as well as an application environment including a browser (network communication software). WML uses simple syntax and limited vocabulary in order to make it suitable for controlling communications with a network by a user having access to a portable device.
Whilst the ability to use smaller terminals can be a major convenience to a user, it can be inconvenient to access complex network addresses using a relatively simple keypad input device. For example, a mobile telephone has a keypad primarily intended for inputting telephone numbers, and so input of other characters can become complex and tiresome. It has been proposed to overcome this disadvantage by providing voice control of the user interface. In such proposed systems, automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are used in order to recognise voice inputs and produce the network location address on the basis of the recognition.
However, in order that a portable device with low processing power is able to implement such voice control, the vocabulary that is stored to be recognised will necessarily be small. Therefore it has been proposed that automatic speech recognition (ASR) be carried out by the network itself. However, this requires the opening of a voice channel between the portable device and the network. This has the obvious disadvantage that the voice channel itself may introduce distortion echoes or noise, thereby degrading the recognition performance. Also, the speed of the voice recognition will be severely compromised.
Embodiments of the present invention can therefore provide a system for overcoming these disadvantages. In one particular embodiment, there is provided a method of communicating with a network having a plurality of applications, each of which has a location address on the network, the method comprising:
defining a plurality of address components, respective combinations of which form location addresses;
storing reference voice signals;
associating the stored reference voice signals with respective address components;
receiving input voice signals;
comparing the input voice signals with the reference voice signals;
composing a location address from the address components that are associated with those reference voice signals which match the received input voice signals; and
communicating with the network on the basis of the composed location address.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method of controlling a service application in a mobile terminal, the service application being provided at a remote server having a location address in a network, wherein the method includes defining a plurality of address components which can be combined to form respective location addresses, and comparing input voice signals with stored reference voice signals associated with respective address components, thereby composing a location address for supply to the remote server from the mobile terminal.
It is emphasised that the term “comprises”or “comprising” is used in this specification to specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps or components, but does not preclude the addition of one or more further features, integers, steps or components, or groups thereof.
As described above, recent standardization of the wireless application protocol (WAP) means that specific servers and locations can be provided for access by users.
As is known, each of the servers, and indeed each of the individual pages of information provided by the servers, have individual location addresses in the network. In order to access the information or application stored on a server, the user makes use of a browser application. The location address, for example URL, is supplied to the browser which accesses the network location indicated by the address. It will be appreciated that many of the location addresses can be complex, and not ideally suited to direct manual user input.
Accordingly, in an embodiment of the present invention, the user terminal (such as the mobile user 5 or the fixed user 7) defines a plurality of address components. Respective combinations of the address components form individual location addresses for accessing the network. In order to access a location address, the user can then simply specify a combination of address components. In an embodiment of the present invention, reference voice signals (or voice marks) are stored by the user and are associated with respective address components. The reference voice signals can therefore be short and convenient labels for the address components. For example, the voice signal “web” could be associated with the address component “http://www.”, and the reference signal “home” could be associated with the user's preferred home page, for example “Ericsson.com/home”. Thus, speaking “web, home” to the device would result, in this example, to production of the address “http://www.Ericsson.com/home”, and the browser application would access that location on the network.
In this way, the user terminal need only compare input voice signals with the reference voice signals rather than performing full automatic speech recognition, in order to determine the location address.
When the user wishes to access the network, he or she inputs a voice signal, via the voice input unit 11, to the processor 10. The processor 10 compares the input voice signal with the reference voice signals stored in the data storage unit 12, to determine which of the reference voice signals match the input voice signals. The address components associated with the matched voice signals are retrieved from the storage unit 12, and are combined. The location address defined by the combination of address components is provided by the processor to the communications unit 13 for supply to the network 1 via a communications link 14. It will be appreciated that the communications link 14 may be an RF link in the case of a mobile user or a fixed link in the case of a fixed user.
Operation of the system to access a location at a network will now be described with reference to
It will be readily appreciated that storing a plurality of address components with their associated references enables the overall amount of stored data to be reduced. This is because several of the individual components may be repeated in different addresses. For example the heading “http://www.” is a very common component of locations on the internet. This component therefore needs only to be stored once for use in many different location addresses.
A particularly useful application of the present invention is for use in controlling devices, such as televisions, and other equipment, via a network location. For example, in
For example, controlling household devices such as a television, a video and a lamp would require the user to define reference voice signals for the control of those devices. The voice signal “control” could provide the address component relating to the initial part of the WAP server address (“wapaddress:”), “TV” can define the address of the television on the WAP server, and “channel” to the computer “cgi?. channel=”. In addition, some generic components such as “ON” (=“on.”), “OFF” (=“off.”) and numbers 0 to 9 can be defined. Thus, to turn on the television to channel 3, the user need only speak “control TV ON channel 3”, rather than “wapdevice://TVaddress/on.cgi?channel=3”. It would be preferable for the user terminal to retain the last controlled device parameters (i.e. TV in the example) such that other controls can be shortcut further, so that changing the volume on the television would simply be a question of saying “volume up” or “volume down”. These last voice inputs would then result in the addresses “wapdevice://TVaddress/cgi?volume=up” and “wapdevice://TVaddress/cgi?volume=down” respectively.
Building up the control language in the form of a location address for accessing a network in this way from address components having their own reference voice signals, means that common commands need only be control 1. For example the numbers 0 to 9, on, off etc are likely to be common to the control of many devices. Also, it has the distinct advantage that the user need only speak short catchwords rather than needing to remember the full control address.
An idea complementing the present invention is to add voice tags to wireless mark-up language documents. Thus voice files can be attached to a location such that feedback (for example OK, error etc) can be supplied to the user. This is particularly suited to those occasions when a display is small or not provided.
It will be appreciated that the mobile users connection to the network can be vis a mobile telephone network such a GSM or third generation GSM, or via a local RF communications system such as Bluetooth™. One advantage of the embodiment of the present invention is that standard communications protocols, such as Internet protocol, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) or Bluetooth™ (standard communication protocol), can be used to control devices via a network server using standard access techniques. The voice activation of the access is enabled by the use of voicemarks. In the case of a mobile device accessing WAP pages, the device can provide the usual WAP page output to feedback to the user.
The present invention is particularly useful when a user is using a headset and does not have access to a keyboard. For example, a user may use a hands-free headset with a mobile telephone. In that case the user does not have direct access to the keypad of the mobile telephone. The present invention then allows the user to access web pages and to control devices without reference to the keypad. Voice feedback from the page or device concerned removes the need for access to a display device.
A further development of the invention enables complete complex URLs to be assigned voice bookmarks. One drawback of associating complex URLs with voice bookmarks is that the URL can be complex to input initially.
For example. A URL used to control a garage door may have CGI calls with complicated parameters, e.g. Http://myGarage/openPort.cgi?open=1&user=arne.
Accordingly, a new object type “vVoiceURL” that is stored in the WAP server in the remote device is introduced. The format of the vVoiceURL object is:
In a WAP page in the remote device (e.g. the garage WAP server) there is a link to this object:
When the user selects the link to the vvoiceURL object (i.e. the remote device action), the browser in the user's device will download the object and see that it is a vVoiceURL object. The user's device will then start its voice recognition training and let the user speak a phrase into the phone. Once the user is satisfied with the phrase, the bookmark is saved (with URL Http://myGarage/openPort.cgi?open=1&user=arne) and the voice tag is associated with the newly created bookmark.
Accordingly, the user is prompted to create a voice tag for a complex URL, without the need for creating the URL itself. The creation of the URL is performed by the server.
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|U.S. Classification||455/563, 455/550.1, 455/456.3, 455/517, 455/456.6, 455/515, 455/456.5, 455/418|
|International Classification||H04M1/27, G06F3/16, G10L15/00, H04Q7/20, H04B7/00, H04M1/38, H04M1/00, H04M11/00, H04Q7/38, H04M1/725, H04M1/56, H04M3/42, H04M3/00|
|Cooperative Classification||H04M1/56, H04M1/72561, H04M1/271|
|European Classification||H04M1/56, H04M1/725F1W, H04M1/27A|
|Feb 8, 2002||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: TELEFONAKTIEBOLAGET LM ERICSSON (PUBL), SWEDEN
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:MINOR, STEN;TILLGREN, MAGNUS;OLSSON, PATRIK;REEL/FRAME:012558/0373;SIGNING DATES FROM 20011218 TO 20020108
|Dec 19, 2006||CC||Certificate of correction|
|Jan 18, 2010||REMI||Maintenance fee reminder mailed|
|May 26, 2010||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|May 26, 2010||SULP||Surcharge for late payment|
|Dec 13, 2013||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 8