GB2408170A

GB2408170A - Telephone communication with silent response feature

Info

Publication number: GB2408170A
Application number: GB0503448A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Roger Cecil Ferry Tucker; Paul St John Brittan
Original assignee: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP
Current assignee: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP
Priority date: 2002-06-07
Filing date: 2003-06-03
Publication date: 2005-05-18
Anticipated expiration: 2023-06-03
Also published as: GB0503448D0; GB0503450D0; GB2408171B; GB2408170B; GB2408171A

Abstract

A telephone call may be received or made by the user of telephony-enabled apparatus (20) in circumstances, such as during a meeting, where spoken responses by the user to what the other party to the call has said are unacceptable. A telephony method and arrangement are disclosed which permits a user to use silent input to the telephony-enabled apparatus (20) in order to generate a response to the other party to the call. Response generation is facilitated by enabling the user to effect a selection from options derived from speech recognition and semantic analysis of the other party's input, with this selection then being used in forming the response.

Description

24081 70 Telephone Communication With Silent Response Feature

Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a method and arrangement for enabling a telephone user to respond silently during a telephone call.

Background of the Invention

Telephone users often take calls in places where they cannot easily speak, but can listen reasonably discretely, especially using an earphone. In order to enable a user to give some sort of response to a caller, it is known (see, for example, WO 99/60765) to provide a number of different pre-recorded messages from which the user can select the most appropriate one once the user has seen who is calling. These messages can either ask for a message to be left, or ask for the caller to hold the line while they move somewhere to take 15 the call. However' this is disruptive if the user is in a meeting or presentation, and in any case may not be possible. ë .

It is an object ofthe present invention to provide better "silent" responses to input received by telephone.

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Summary of the Invention

According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a telephone communication method comprising the steps of: (a) establishing a voice telephony call between a remote entity and telephony-enabled apparatus of a user; (b) at the choice of said user, facilitating, during the course of at least part of the call, generation of a response to voice input from said entity to the call by carrying out speech recognition and semantic analysis on said input to generate input-dependent response options at least some of which are not expressed in said input, these response options being presented to the user through the telephony-enabled apparatus; (c) using silent user input to the telephony-enabled apparatus to generate said response by at least selecting a said response option for use in the response; and (d) sending the response to said entity.

According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a telephone communication arrangement for enabling a user of telephonyenabled apparatus to generate silently a response to voice input received from a remote entity during the course of a voice telephony call involving that entity and the apparatus, the arrangement comprising: apparatus output functionality adapted to avoid disturbing nearby persons when presenting output to the user; apparatus silent-input functionality for silent indication by the user of a desired selection from output of the output functionality; response-facilitation functionality arranged at the user's choice to facilitate, during at least a part of said call, generation of a response to said input from the remote entity to the call; the response-facilitation functionality comprising means for carrying out speech recognition and analysis on said input to generate input- dependent response 15 options at least some of which are not expressed in said input, and means for . presenting these response options via said output functionality to the user; and response generation means for generating a response to said input by using at least a selection made by the user from said response options using the silent-input functionality.

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Brief Description of the Drawines

Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of nonlimiting example, with reference to the accompanying diagrammatic drawings, in which: 25. Figure 1 is a diagram of a first embodiment of telephony-enabled apparatus in which voice input received over the apparatus is subject to speech recognition and analysis to provide possible responses for a user to choose between in generating a response silently; and Figure 2 is a simplified state transition diagram illustrating the operation of the Figure 1 apparatus.

Best Mode of Carryine Out the Invention In the following description, various implementations are disclosed for providing telephony-enabled apparatus with a silent response capability. As used herein, the term "telephony-enabled apparatus" is intended to include any device or aggregation of devices that provide a user with telephone functionality, whether this by traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), by a Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN); by the use of IP-based telephony over the Internet or other compute network; or by similar means.

Thus, for example and without limitation, the term "telephony-enabled apparatus" encompasses a traditional fixed line phone, a dedicated cellular mobile phone, and a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) provided with functionality for accessing a telephone network (such as a cellular radio interface for accessing a PLMN or a "Bluetooth" short-range radio subsystem for connecting to a fixed unit connected to a telephone network). ë .

15 Furthermore, whilst a silent response capability is most likely to be used when a user of . telephony-enabled apparatus receives a call in circumstances where a spoken exchange would be inappropriate, it will be appreciated that a silent response capability can also be used where the call has been initiated by the party using the silent response capability.

20 Turning now to a consideration of the Figure 1 embodiment, in this embodiment a user is . provided with telephony-enabled apparatus 20 in the form of a cellular mobile phone capable of receiving/making calls via a PLMN 10 and provided with sufficient processing power to effect various speech recognition and generation tasks mentioned hereinafter.

More particularly, the apparatus 20 comprises the following elements for providing standard mobile phone capability, namely: a radio interface 21 for interfacing with PLMN 10, telephone functionality 22, an audio interface subsystem 23 formed by a microphone and earphone (herein taken to encompass both a handset speaker or an earpiece) 23, a keypad 25, a display 26, and a display and keypad controller 24. The operation of these elements to provide standard phone operation is well understood by persons skilled in the art and therefore will not be further described herein. However, it is noted that in the present embodiment, the keypad 25 is provided with "soft keys" 27 each of which can be set by controller 24 to control a number of different functions or enable a particular option to be chosen, the current function or option associated with a key 27 being indicated by a corresponding label 28 shown on display 28. The use of soft keys 27 facilitates user operation of the apparatus 20.

In addition to acting in a normal mobile phone mode, the telephone functionality 22 can be set, via keypad 25 and controller 24, into other modes including a recording mode for recording and storing incoming calls in message store 30. The current mode is held in mode unit 29 of telephone functionality 22, the mode unit 29 also serving to control the functionality 22 as appropriate for the currently set mode.

In addition to its normal operating mode and a recording mode, the telephone functionality 22 can also be set in a silent answering mode in which the user can generate responses to voice input received during the course of a telephone call from a remote party (that is, a . 15 party at the other end of the call to the user of apparatus 20) by use of silent input - in the .. present example, by operation of keypad 25. To this end, the apparatus further comprises a speech recognizes 32 arranged to receive voice input from the remote party and turn it into text form, a natural language understanding unit 33 for receiving the output of the recognizer 32 and analyzing this output to extract semantic meaning, and a response-option 20 generation unit 34 for generating possible response options based on the semantic meaning . a.

of the input. This latter unit 34 operates, for example, on the basis of a generic set of mappings between semantic input and corresponding response options. Thus the following inputs in quotation marks can be set to give rise to the indicated response options: "Do you agree?" Yes I No I Partially "This week or next?" This week I Next week I Neither "Are you free?" Yes I No The generic set of mappings can be extended by the user and stored in unit 34. The set of response options generated by the unit 34 are passed to the controller 24 where they are assigned to soft keys 27 - that is, each response is mapped to a respective key, this mapping 35 being temporarily memorized and the response text displayed in a corresponding label 28.

The user is thus presented with response options to the input received from the remote party; generally, of course, the user will also be presented with the input itself in a manner adapted not to disturb persons nearby such as via the earphone of subsystem 23 or, in the text form produced by the recognizer 32, via the display 26. However, in appropriate circumstances, output of the full remote-party input can be omitted.

User can now select a desired response from those presented by pressing the appropriate soft key 27 to cause the corresponding text to be passed either directly or via a natural language generation unit 36 to a text-tospeech converter 37. The output from the text-to speech converter 37 is passed to telephone functionality 22 for return to the remote party over the same channel as used for the input from the remote party.

As described above, the Figure 1 apparatus can be used in a normal operating mode, in an recording mode for storing incoming calls, and in a silent response mode. Figure 2 depicts . a simplified state diagram showing the inter-relationship between the main states (modes) in which the telephone functionality can operate. More particularly, when no call is being received, the user can set the telephone functionality 22 either into a normal alert mode 40 A. in which the user is alerted to an incoming call by a standard ring tone or tune, or into a silent alert mode 41 in which the user is alerted silently to an incoming call (for example, . . 20 by activation of a vibrator, not shown). Upon the user being alerted to an incoming call, ' the user can check the apparatus display for any identification ofthe caller and then choose one of the following options: - to answer the call in a normal manner in which case the telephone functionality 22 is put into a "normal conversation"(norrnal operating) mode 42; - to answer the call in a silent manner in which case the telephone functionality 22 is put into a "silent conversation" mode 42 in which the elements 32 to 37 are activated (in this case a synthesized message is preferably played to the remote party explaining that the user is listening but all responses will be generated as text and synthesized); - to activate the message recording functionality of the apparatus in which case the telephone functionality 22 is put either into "record (N)" mode 44 or "record (S)" mode 45 according to whether the alert was received whilst in the normal alert mode or silent alert mode.

The user may also simply ignore the incoming call in which case the telephone functionality remains in its current alert mode 40 or 41.

Whilst in the normal conversation mode 42 or silent conversation mode 43, the user can change conversation mode (that is, from normal to silent or vice versa) or transfer the call to a record mode 44 or 45. Upon call termination, the telephone functionality reverts to one or other of the alert modes 40, 41 as indicated by the dashed arrows in Figure 2.

It will be appreciated that in the Figure 1 embodiment substantial processing power is needed to implement the silent response elements 32 to 37 and, as a result, it may be desirable to restrict the domain in which the conversation is conducted - the remote party can be instructed as to this domain by an initial standard message played to that party upon . 15 the user deciding to answer a call in the silent conversation mode. An alternative solution - to the issue of processing power is to implement apparatus 20 in the form of a PDA or other more powerful processing platform. A further alternative would be to provide the elements 32, 33, 36 and 37 in functionality of the telephone network itself with the apparatus being passed the response options (and generally also the original input) and . . 20 feeding back the selected response to the network functionality concerned. This latter .- alternative can be effected in a telephone system with IN (Intelligent Network) capability by having "silent conversation" as a network service which is initiated by the user choosing the silent conversation mode.

It will be appreciated that many variants are possible to the above described embodiment of the invention.

As regards the mechanism employed for silent input by the user, this can be key-based, pointing based (such as by a touch screen or mouse device), or any other suitable input device such as gaze-based input.

Although in the described embodiment, the silently-generated responses have been converted from text form to voice signals by a text-to-speech converter before being forwarded to the remote party, the response could be forwarded to the remote party in text form over any channel available including mobile-phone short messaging, GPRS, instant messaging over IP, multimedia messaging or even modulated onto the outgoing voice path. ë ë .e .e ë a ea :e . - ma

Claims

1. A telephone communication method comprising the steps of: (a) establishing a voice telephony call between a remote entity and telephony-enabled apparatus of a user; (b) at the choice of said user, facilitating, during the course of at least part of the call, generation of a response to voice input from said entity to the call by carrying out speech recognition and semantic analysis on said input to generate input-dependent response options at least some of which are not expressed in said input, these response options being presented to the user through the telephony-enabled apparatus; (c) using silent user input to the telephony-enabled apparatus to generate said response by at least selecting a said response option for use in the response; and (d) sending the response to said entity. - .

2. A method according to claim 1, wherein said response options are presented to the user . in text form on a display of the telephonyenabled apparatus. .

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3. A method according to claim 1, wherein said response options are presented to the user in audible form through an earphone.

I. . 2n I.

4. A method according to claim 1, wherein the input from said entity is presented to the user in audible form through an earphone, and the response options are presented to the user in text form on a display of the telephony-enabled apparatus.

5. A method according to anyone ofthe preceding claims, wherein said silent userinput is effected through hard or soft keys of the telephonyenabled apparatus.

6. A method according to any one ofthe preceding claims, wherein the response generated in step (c) is in text form and step (d) involves converting the text-form response into speech for return to said entity over the same channel as that used for the said input from the entity.

7. A method according to any one of claims 1 to 6, wherein the response generated in step (c) is in text form and step (d) involves returning the text-form response to the said entity over a communication channel different from that used for the said input from the entity.

8. A telephone communication arrangement for enabling a user of telephonyenabled apparatus to generate silently a response to voice input received from a remote entity during the course of a voice telephony call involving that entity and the apparatus, the arrangement comprising: apparatus output functionality adapted to avoid disturbing nearby persons when presenting output to the user; apparatus silent-input functionality for silent indication by the user of a desired selection from output of the output functionality; response-facilitation functionality arranged at the user's choice to facilitate, during at least a part of said call, generation of a response to said input from the remote entity to the call; the response-facilitation functionality comprising means for carrying out speech recognition and analysis on said input to generate input-dependent response options at least some of which are not expressed in said input, and means for presenting these response options via said output functionality to the user; and response generation means for generating a response to said input by using at least a . 20 selection made by the user from said response options using the silent-input A. e.

functionality.

9. An arrangement according to claim 8, wherein the response-facilitation functionality is incorporated into the telephony-enabled apparatus.

10. An arrangement according to claim 8, wherein the responsefacilitation functionality is part of a network infrastructure used by the telephony-enabled apparatus.

11. An arrangement according to claim 8, wherein the output functionality is a visual display for presenting said response options in text form.

12. An arrangement according to claim 8, wherein the output functionality is an earphone for presenting said response options in audible form.

13. An arrangement according to claim 8, wherein said silent-input functionality comprises hard or soft keys of the telephony-enabled apparatus.

14. An arrangement according to any one of claims 8 to 13, wherein said silent input functionality is operative to generate said response in text form, the telephony-enabled apparatus further comprising means for converting the text-form response into speech for return to said entity over the same channel as that used for the said input from the entity.

15. An arrangement according to any one of claims 8 to 13, wherein said silent-input functionality is operative to generate said response in text form, the telephony-enabled apparatus further comprising means for returning the text-form response to the said entity over a communication channel different from that used for the said input from the entity. .e ë

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