Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090082037 | PERSONAL POINTS OF INTEREST IN LOCATION-BASED APPLICATIONS - Framework for receiving, processing, and re-using personal points of interest (PPOI) information of a user in a location-based application. A telephone dialog system provides location-based information related PPOI of a user. For example, the PPOI information can include major intersections that the user may normally travel, gas stations, clubs, etc., based on real-time data obtained via web services. The PPOI information can be acquired using common names and nicknames, which are added into system lexicon and recognition grammars. Each PPOI is also tagged to the user (or “owner”) who defined it. The PPOI information can also be shared to support a community of users. The framework also resolves conflicting PPOI information between multiple users and multiple locations. PPOI information input by one user can be used to extract demographic information and personal preferences and be re-used by other users by automatically popping up common names and attributes other users entered for the same nickname. | 03-26-2009 |
20090157302 | PEDESTRIAN ROUTE PRODUCTION - As a pedestrian travels, various difficulties can be encountered, such as traveling through an unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures. A route can be developed for a person taking into account factors that specifically affect a pedestrian. Moreover, the route can alter as a situation of a user changes; for instance, if a user wants to add a stop along a route. | 06-18-2009 |
20090157307 | ADDITIONAL CONTENT BASED ON INTENDED TRAVEL DESTINATION - When users travel to an intended destination, a plurality of information can be beneficial to assist their travel. If a person is traveling to a crowded event, then information can be provided such that congested traffic areas can be provided. There can be financial opportunities available in relation to providing information concerning an intended destination. An advertiser can pay money to have information played about the advertiser when it relates to the intended destination. Furthermore, a user can pay money for detailed data concerning an intended location, such as where cheapest parking is located. | 06-18-2009 |
20090157311 | FEDERATED ROUTE PRODUCTION - A route can be generated through utilization of a conventional manner, such as a portable electronic device accessing a database with roads, traffic information, weather data, and the like. As a user approaches a private area, the route can be augmented with travel information concerning the private area. Artificial intelligence techniques can be used to determine if a route should be augmented, to infer what augmentations to make, etc. | 06-18-2009 |
20090157312 | SOCIAL NETWORK BASED ROUTES - A route can be generated that considers social networking information. For instance, a user can be traveling on vacation and individuals designated by a user can add comments to a route. In addition, previous journeys of user contacts can be evaluated and based upon the evaluation results, portions of a route can be constructed. Further functionality can include transferring rewards between parties for disclosing information as well as posting information on various social networking profiles. | 06-18-2009 |
20090157498 | GENERATIONAL INTELLIGENT NAVIGATION SYNCHRONIZATION OR UPDATE - A direction set can be augmented with up-to-date information such that a route to be taken by a user is changed. A user can request a direction set to take a user along a long route that minimizes cost to a user. A route can be generated using a set of known fuel prices; however, as the user travels, fuel prices can change. New fuel information can be gathered and the route can be modified based upon the gathered information. | 06-18-2009 |
20090157499 | AUTOMATIC SPLICES FOR TARGETED ADVERTISEMENTS - Commonly targeted advertising is used to attract a specific demographic towards a particular product and/or service. An advertisement can be presented over a vehicle radio that relate to a route while a user is driving. Advertisements can be directed to a user, including such information as a user name, a user's destination, contextual information, etc. Advertisements can be masked to appear as thought they are part of a standard program; for instance, a normal radio advertiser's voice can be used. | 06-18-2009 |
20090157540 | DESTINATION AUCTIONED THROUGH BUSINESS OF INTEREST - In order to provide advertising to a user concerning an intended travel destination, an auction takes place where multiple companies place bids to have an advertisement disclosed. Bid selection can take place according to various parameters, including matching a user interest, a bidder that offers a highest price, etc. Bids can be solicited and then received—once a bid is selected for presentation, the advertisement can be received, evaluated, and then presented to a user. | 06-18-2009 |
20090157583 | ROUTE TRANSFER BETWEEN DEVICES - A user can intend to travel between different locations and employ different traveling manners to reach an intended travel destination. At different points, different devices can be employed for disclosing a route. For instance, as a user walks, a route can be integrated into a personal electronic device, such as a cellular telephone. An evaluation can take place that due to specific route details, for example detailed text, a particular device would be superior for presentment over another. | 06-18-2009 |
20090210142 | SAFE ROUTE CONFIGURATION - Routes can be produced based on safety characteristics of paths that are included in the route. Safety characteristics can include how susceptible an area surrounding a path is to crime as well as traffic data, such as how many automobile accidents take place on average. Various amounts of safety information can be gathered and a particular path can be assigned a safety score. Analysis can run on different path combinations that would take a user from a starting point to an intended destination. A route can be produced based on the safety score alone, such as a route with a lowest score, based on the safety score with other factors such as anticipated traffic, and the like. | 08-20-2009 |
20090210143 | ROUTE-BASED ACTIVITY PLANNER - Oftentimes individuals have a number of objectives to complete while traveling in a vehicle. The objectives can be arranged automatically and an associated route can be produced such that the objectives can be completed in an effective manner. Data related to the objectives can be collected such as a traffic pattern on paths near a location the objective is to take place. Locations for the objectives to be completed can be determined automatically as well as provided by user. Analysis of the collected data can take place and based on a result of the analysis, an efficient route is produced. | 08-20-2009 |
20090210242 | LOAD BALANCE PAYMENT - A user can be provided a variety of incentives to take a route that is different from a standard path in order to relieve path load balancing issues. Information on a primary path can be collected and analyzed to determine if it would be beneficial to encourage users to take an alternate path. If it is determined that users should be encouraged to take another path, then analysis of potential users can occur. A result of the user analysis can be used to select users that are offered to take the alternate path as well as an incentive offered to the user to encourage her to take the alternate path. | 08-20-2009 |
20090210276 | AD HOC AND OPPORTUNISTIC TRANSPORTATION SERVICES - Individuals can be organized into travel groups in plans constructed in advance or in real-time to save resources and travel in an efficient manner. Multi-segment trips between starting points and destinations can be constructed with several vehicles, including private, public, and commercial transportation assets. Numerous requests for real-time or planned recurrent commutes by a population of users can be considered in a larger analysis that seeks to optimize one or more attributes such as vehicle usage and/or greenhouse emissions. Data concerning multiple related individuals can be gathered and analyzed—based upon the analysis, a determination can be made if it is logical to group individuals together such that they physically travel together. A transportation asset provider and/or individuals can be offered a reward to become part of the travel group and/or to perform specific tasks related to the travel group, such as using a vehicle with a certain fuel type. | 08-20-2009 |
20090210302 | ROUTE REWARD AUGMENTATION - Different incentives can be provided to a user for the user to take different routes. Information related to a user's specific situation can be gathered and a reward can be associated with a route. A user can input an intended destination and different routes can be taken, where the routes have various characteristics. The route can be analyzed and a determination can be made as to what routes can be associated with a user taking a particular route. Commonly, different companies can supply rewards such that the user travels past their advertisement or makes a stop at their store. | 08-20-2009 |
20090304211 | LOUDSPEAKER ARRAY DESIGN - Sound signals to be output from a loudspeaker array are modified by a plurality of filters designed according to an unconstrained optimization procedure to improve overall performance (e.g., power, directivity) of the loudspeaker array. More particularly, respective filters are configured to receive a signal to be output to a plurality of loudspeakers. Upon receiving the signal, the respective filters individually modify the received signal according to the results of the unconstrained optimization procedure and then output the individually modified signals to respective loudspeakers. The unconstrained optimization procedure takes into account manufacturing tolerances and individually enhances the signal output to each of a plurality of individual loudspeakers within an array to achieve an overall improvement in performance. In one example, a speaker system utilizes the unconstrained optimization procedure to enable a user to hear an output sound clearly, while adjacent people experience the output sound at lower volume, if at all. | 12-10-2009 |
20090316929 | SOUND CAPTURE SYSTEM FOR DEVICES WITH TWO MICROPHONES - The perceptual sound quality of desired audio signals (e.g., human voice) captured by an electronic device (e.g., cell phone) are improved by reducing ambient noise according to an algorithm that acts upon audio signals captured from a front and rear direction. More particularly, audio signals captured by two directional microphones pointing in opposite directions (e.g., a front microphone which receives audio signals from a forward direction and a rear microphone which receives audio signals from a rear direction) are classified and subsequently enhanced (e.g., unwanted signals are suppressed) according to a probability of their source (e.g., front, rear, or noise) thereby providing an improved perceptual sound recording than each microphone individually. The resultant signals provide decreased noise since the contribution of the front and rear microphones are taken into consideration and the signal from the more relevant (e.g., in the direction from which sound is coming) microphone is utilized. | 12-24-2009 |
20090323924 | ACOUSTIC ECHO SUPPRESSION - Sound signals captured by a microphone are adjusted to provide improved sound quality. More particularly, an Acoustic Echo Reduction system which performs a first stage of echo reduction (e.g., acoustic echo cancellation) on a received signal is configured to perform a second stage of echo reduction (e.g., acoustic echo suppression) by segmenting the received signal into a plurality of frequency bins respectively comprised within a number of frames (e.g., 0.3 s to 0.5 s sound signal segments) for a given block. Data comprised within respective frequency bins is modeled according to a probability density function (e.g., Gaussian distribution). The probability of whether respective frequency bins comprise predominantly near-end signal or predominantly residual echo is calculated. The output of the acoustic echo suppression is computed as a product of the content of a frequency bin in a frame and the probability the frequency bin in a frame comprises predominantly near-end signal, thereby making near-end signals more prominent than residual echoes. | 12-31-2009 |
20120128176 | SPATIAL NOISE SUPPRESSION FOR A MICROPHONE ARRAY - A noise reduction system and a method of noise reduction includes utilizing an array of microphones to receive sound signals from stationary sound sources and a user that is speaking. Positions of the stationary sound sources relative to the array of microphones are estimated using sound signals emitted from the sound sources at an earlier time. Noise is suppressed in an audio signal based at least in part on the estimated positions of the stationary sound sources. A position of the user relative to the array of microphones can also be estimated | 05-24-2012 |
20120166196 | Word-Dependent Language Model - This document describes word-dependent language models, as well as their creation and use. A word-dependent language model can permit a speech-recognition engine to accurately verify that a speech utterance matches a multi-word phrase. This is useful in many contexts, including those where one or more letters of the expected phrase are known to the speaker. | 06-28-2012 |
20120271632 | Speaker Identification - Speaker identification techniques are described. In one or more implementations, sample data is received at a computing device of one or more user utterances captured using a microphone. The sample data is processed by the computing device to identify a speaker of the one or more user utterances. The processing involving use of a feature set that includes features obtained using a filterbank having filters that space linearly at higher frequencies and logarithmically at lower frequencies, respectively, features that model the speaker's vocal tract transfer function, and features that indicate a vibration rate of vocal folds of the speaker of the sample data. | 10-25-2012 |
20120323967 | Spelling Using a Fuzzy Pattern Search - A multimedia system configured to receive user input in the form of a spelled character sequence is provided. In one implementation, a spell mode is initiated, and a user spells a character sequence. The multimedia system performs spelling recognition and recognizes a sequence of character representations having a possible ambiguity resulting from any user and/or system errors. The sequence of character representations with the possible ambiguity yields multiple search keys. The multimedia system performs a fuzzy pattern search by scoring each target item from a finite dataset of target items based on the multiple search keys. One or more relevant items are ranked and presented to the user for selection, each relevant item being a target item that exceeds a relevancy threshold. The user selects the indented character sequence from the one or more relevant items. | 12-20-2012 |