PATENT REVIEW

                 Spoken word controlled automatic dialer

PATENT NO. : US4348550 A

Inventors  : Frank C. Pirz, Lawrence R. Rabiner, Aaron E. Rosenberg, Jay G. Wilpon

Publication date: Sep 7, 1982

Filing date: Jun 9, 1980

A speech controlled dialing circuit identifies input utterances which may be a command word, repertory word (dialing name or number) or non-recognized ("Other") word.

Responsive to the identification of each occurring input utterance, a set of predetermined templates are selected to identify the next occuring utterance.

A programmed microprocessor system is described to implement the main controller function.

Automatic and repertory dialing arrangements permit telephone system subscribers to access frequently called telephone numbers

without time consuming and errorprone manual dialing.

Such dialers find widespread use in the business environment where efficient utilization of telephone communication is economically important.

While the number of manual operations needed to complete the dialing of a telephone number is significantly reduced 

in known repertory dialing systems, manual operations have not been eliminated.

A directory stores a set of dialing signals corresponding to the repertory words.Responsive to each input utterance, a speech analyzer produces a signal representative of the acoustic features of the utterance. 

Jointly responsive to the stored template signals and the utterance acoustic features signal, a spoken word recognizer generates a signal identifying the input utterance. 

Upon the identification of an input utterance as one of the repertory words, the corresponding dialing signal is retrieved from the directory store.

 Responsive to the identification of an input utterance, a set of predetermined template signals are selected to identify the next occurring input utterance.

According to one aspect of the invention, a control signal corresponding to each utterance identifying signal is generated. 

Signals to address templates in the template memory are produced responsive to the next occurring input utterance. 

Jointly responsive to the utterance identifying control signal and the memory addressing signals, a predetermined a set of template signals are applied to the 

spoken word recognizer.

Detection of other than the two short interval command words "error" or "stop" causes a dialing signal corresponding to the repertory name to be retrieved from a directory store.

 The dialing signal is then supplied to the user telephone line. Recognition of the short utterance as "error" resets the dialer to recognize the succeeding utterance as one of the repertory word templates.

 Detection of the shortened utterance as "stop" returns the dialer to its rest mode. After the dialing signal is obtained, the dialer is switched to its call state and the recognizer is conditioned to detect an input utterance as the isolated word template "hang up."