MICHAEL STEPHEN COHEN, MD
Neurology at Trousdale Dr, Burlingame, CA

5317673, May 31, 1994

Jun 22, 1992

7/901716

Michael H. Cohen - Burlingame CA
Horacio E. Franco - Menlo Park CA

SRI International - Menlo Park CA

G10L 506

395 241

In a hidden Markov model-based speech recognition system, multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) are used in context-dependent estimation of a plurality of state-dependent observation probability distributions of phonetic classes. Estimation is obtained by the Bayesian factorization of the observation likelihood in terms of posterior probabilities of phone classes assuming the context and the input speech vector. The context-dependent estimation is employed as the state-dependent observation probabilities needed as parameter input to a hidden Markov model speech processor to identify the word sequence representing the unknown speech input of input speech vectors. Within the speech processor, models are provided which employ the observation probabilities in the recognition process. The number of context-dependent nets is reduced to a single net by sharing the units of the input layer and the hidden layer and the weights connecting them in the multilayer perceptron while providing one output layer for each relevant context. Each output layer is trained as an independent network on the specific examples of the corresponding context it represents.

6219643, Apr 17, 2001

Jun 26, 1998

9/105837

Michael H. Cohen - Burlingame CA
Eric G Jackson - Menlo Park CA
Vijaya L Kurada - Clifton Park NY

Nuance Communications, Inc. - Menlo Park CA

G10L 1522, H04M 350

704257

A method and apparatus are used for analyzing dialogs in an interactive natural language speech recognition system. As a telephone call is received in the interactive natural language speech recognition system, user utterances are digitized and stored. A data log is formed which stores the prompt played, the dialog state, the address location of the audio recording of the user's responses, the recognition grammar, the recognition result type, the recognized word string, the understood meaning/interpretation, and the recognition latency. The telephone call can be virtually reconstructed from the stored user utterances and the data log. An automatic data analysis tool provides information regarding the relative success and failure of the various dialogs as an aid to modifying the dialogs to improve system performance.

6629066, Sep 30, 2003

Sep 7, 1999

09/390457

Eric G. Jackson - Menlo Park CA
Michael H. Cohen - Burlingame CA
Fuliang Weng - Palo Alto CA

Nuance Communications - Menlo Park CA

G06F 1728

704 9, 704255

A computerized method for building and running natural language understanding systems, wherein a natural language understanding system takes a sentence as input and returns some representation of the possible meanings of the sentence as output (the “interpretation”) using a run-time interpreter th assigns interpretations to sentences and a compiler that produces (in a computer memory) an internal specification needed for the run-time interpreter from a user specification of the semantics of the application. The compiler builds a natural language system, while the run-time interpreter runs the system.

6560576, May 6, 2003

Apr 25, 2000

09/557988

Michael H. Cohen - Burlingame CA
Jennifer E. Balogh - Fremont CA
Tracy D. Wax - Brisbane CA
Madhavan S. Thirumalai - Palo Alto CA
Debajit Ghosh - Sunnyvale CA

Nuance Communications - Menlo Park CA

G10L 2100

704270, 704275

A voice-enabled application, which may be a voice browser, is configured to provide active help to a user. The application maintains a usage history of each user with respect to dialog states. The usage history includes various user-specific variables, some of which are valid across multiple sessions. The application maintains a number of active help prompts capable of being played to a user as speech, each containing information on a different, specific help topic. The application further maintains a number of sets of conditions, each set corresponding to a different one of the active help prompts. The application monitors dialog states during a session of a user and generates an event based on the dialog states. The application applies certain ones of the conditions to certain ones of the user-specific variables in response to the event. The application then plays a active help prompt containing information on a specific help topic to the user if the applied conditions are satisfied.

6859776, Feb 22, 2005

Oct 4, 1999

09/412173

Michael H. Cohen - Burlingame CA, US
Tracy D. Wax - Burlingame CA, US
Michael A. Prince - Los Altos CA, US
Steven C. Ehrlich - Burlingame CA, US

Nuance Communications - Menlo Park CA

G10L021/00

704270, 7042701, 704275

A network comprises a number of speech-enabled sites maintaining a number of voice pages. A central server on the network executes a voice browser which provides users with access to the sites using voice-activated hyperlinks. The server also maintains and brokers information associated with the users based on spoken dialogs between the users and the sites. In response to a user accessing a given ASR site, information about that user is provided by the server for use by that ASR site. The information is used by the ASR site to optimize a spoken dialog between the user and the ASR site by reducing the amount of information the user is required to provide during the dialog. Information about the user can thereby be shared between separate speech enabled sites, in a manner which is transparent to the user, in order to expedite the user's interaction with those sites.

7263489, Aug 28, 2007

Jan 11, 2002

10/046026

Michael H. Cohen - Burlingame CA, US
Larry P. Heck - Los Altos CA, US
Jennifer E. Balogh - Fremont CA, US
James M. Riseman - San Francisco CA, US
Naghmeh N. Mirghafori - Fremont CA, US

Nuance Communications, Inc. - Burlington MA

G10L 21/00

704270, 7042701, 37926501, 379256

A system which uses automatic speech recognition to provide dialogs with human speakers automatically detects one or more characteristics, which may be characteristics of a speaker, his speech, his environment, or the speech channel used to communicate with the speaker. The characteristic may be detected either during the dialog or at a later time based on stored data representing the dialog. If the characteristic is detected during the dialog, the dialog can be customized for the speaker at an application level, based on the detected characteristic. The customization may include customization of operations and features such as call routing, error recovery, call flow, content selection, system prompts, or system persona. Data indicative of detected characteristics can be stored and accumulated for many speakers and/or dialogs and analyzed offline to generate a demographic or other type of analysis of the speakers or dialogs with respect to one or more detected characteristics.

6292767, Sep 18, 2001

Dec 21, 1995

8/576874

Eric G. Jackson - Menlo Park CA
Michael H. Cohen - Burlingame CA
Fuliang Weng - Palo Alto CA

Nuance Communications - Menlo Park CA

G06F 1720, G06F 1727

704 1

A computerized method for building and running natural language understanding systems, wherein a natural language understanding system takes a sentence as input and returns some representation of the possible meanings of the sentence as output (the "interpretation") using a run-time interpreter that assigns interpretations to sentences and a compiler that produces (in a computer memory) an internal specification needed for the run-time interpreter from a user specification of the semantics of the application. The compiler builds a natural language system, while the run-time interpreter runs the system.