DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-20 are cancelled.
Claims 21-47 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 31 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 31 recites “wireless communication circuitry; and an operation mode controller to cause the wireless communication circuitry”. However, claim 31 depends on claim 21 and there is already a “wireless communication circuitry” includes in the claim 21, it is unclear whether the “wireless communication circuitry” from claim 31 referring to a different circuitry or the same one as claim 31.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 21-30, 33-47 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Piersol et al. (hereinafter “Piersol”) (US 20190156818 A1) in view of Woo et al. (hereinafter “Woo”) (US 20190066680 A1).
As to claims 21, 33, and 41, Piersol teaches the invention, comprising:
a microphone to capture audio ([0021, 0027] The device 110 receives (152) audio including speech from one or more microphones of the device…An audio capture component, such as a microphone of the audio device 110, captures audio 11 corresponding to a spoken utterance, which may include a command.);
wireless communication circuitry ([Figs. 1, 8] [0021, 0097] Via the antenna(s), the input/output device interfaces 802 may connect to one or more networks 199 via a wireless local area network (WLAN) (such as WiFi) radio, Bluetooth, and/or wireless network radio, such as a radio capable of communication with a wireless communication network such as a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, WiMAX network, 3G network, etc.);
machine readable instructions [0114]; and
at least one processor circuit to execute the instructions to:
analyze the audio to identify first words in the audio, the first words identified based on local processing of the audio, audio data to be stored in memory for a period of time [Piersol teaches that audio data representing a spoken utterance is supplied to ASR component 250, which may be local to audio device 110. The ASR component converts audio into text and transcribes the audio data into text data representing the words contained in the speech, and buffering input speech in one or more local memory buffers] ([0019-0020, 0027, 0034, 0087] Instead, a user may include the command before the wakeword (e.g., “play some music Alexa”)…. capture speech that precedes and/or follows a wakeword, such that the speech associated with the command and wakeword can be included together and considered part of a single utterance that may be processed by a system. To perform speech processing with a variable wakeword location, a system may be configured to buffer input speech… When a wakeword is detected, the system may look backwards to the most recent marker that preceded the wakeword.… An audio capture component, such as a microphone of the audio device 110, captures audio 11 corresponding to a spoken utterance, which may include a command. The spoken utterance is spoken by a user 10 and captured by the device 110… Audio data 111 comprising a representation of the utterance may be sent to an ASR component 250. The ASR component 250 may be local to the audio device 110… The ASR component 250 converts the audio into text. The ASR component 250 thus transcribes audio data into text data representing the words of the speech contained in the audio data… For example, ASR results in the form of a single textual representation of the speech, an N-best list including multiple hypotheses and respective scores, lattice, etc);
analyze the audio to identify second words in the audio, the second words spoken after the first words are spoken, the second words spoken prior to an expiration of the period of time, the second words identified based on local processing of the audio [Piersol teaches continuing to receive and process audio while earlier audio remains in the local buffer, and locally processing the audio to determine whether it contains a subsequently occurring wakeword, while input speech is being buffered, wakeword detection is performed and, when the wakeword is detected, the system looks backward to the most recent marker that preceded the wakeword, wherein the buffer is a circular buffer storing a predetermined amount of audio data, after which older information is circularly rewritten by newly received audio] ([0019-0023, 0027, 0034, 0087] Instead, a user may include the command before the wakeword (e.g., “play some music Alexa, the Beatles please”)…. capture speech that precedes and/or follows a wakeword, such that the speech associated with the command and wakeword can be included together and considered part of a single utterance that may be processed by a system. To perform speech processing with a variable wakeword location, a system may be configured to buffer input speech… When a wakeword is detected, the system may look backwards to the most recent marker that preceded the wakeword.… An audio capture component, such as a microphone of the audio device 110, captures audio 11 corresponding to a spoken utterance, which may include a command. The spoken utterance is spoken by a user 10 and captured by the device 110… Audio data 111 comprising a representation of the utterance may be sent to an ASR component 250. The ASR component 250 may be local to the audio device 110… The ASR component 250 converts the audio into text. The ASR component 250 thus transcribes audio data into text data representing the words of the speech contained in the audio data… For example, ASR results in the form of a single textual representation of the speech, an N-best list including multiple hypotheses and respective scores, lattice, etc);
cause transmission of the first information and second information to a cloud server for further analysis, the second information associated with the second words, the first information to provide context for the second words ([0034-0036, 0037-0052] SR results in the form of a single textual representation of the speech, an N-best list including multiple hypotheses and respective scores, lattice, etc. may be sent to a server, such as server 120, for natural language understanding (NLU) processing, such as conversion of the text into commands for execution, by the server 120, or by another device (such as a server running a search engine, etc.)… The NLU process takes textual input (such as processed from ASR 250 based on the utterance 11) and attempts to make a semantic interpretation of the text. That is, the NLU process determines the meaning behind the text based on the individual words and then implements that meaning. NLU processing 260 interprets a text string to derive an intent or a desired action from the user as well as the pertinent pieces of information in the text that allow a device (e.g., device 110) to complete that action… To correctly perform NLU processing of speech input, the NLU process 260 may be configured to determine a “domain” of the utterance so as to determine and narrow down which services offered by the endpoint device (e.g., server 120 or device 110) may be relevant. For example, an endpoint device may offer services relating to interactions with a telephone service, a contact list service, a calendar/scheduling service, a music player service, etc. Words in a single text query may implicate more than one service, and some services may be functionally linked (e.g., both a telephone service and a calendar service may utilize data from the contact list)… the NER module 260 may parse the query to identify words as subject, object, verb, preposition, etc., based on grammar rules and models, prior to recognizing named entities… The NER modules 262 may also use contextual operational rules to fill slots. For example, if a user had previously requested to pause a particular song and thereafter requested that the voice-controlled device to “please un-pause my music,” the NER module 262 may apply an inference-based rule to fill a slot associated with the name of the song that the user currently wishes to play—namely the song that was playing at the time that the user requested to pause the music…); and
provide a response to the second words, the response obtained from the cloud server ([0036-0039, 0043, 0053] The NLU process takes textual input (such as processed from ASR 250 based on the utterance 11) and attempts to make a semantic interpretation of the text. That is, the NLU process determines the meaning behind the text based on the individual words and then implements that meaning. NLU processing 260 interprets a text string to derive an intent or a desired action from the user as well as the pertinent pieces of information in the text that allow a device (e.g., device 110) to complete that action… An intent classification (IC) module 264 parses the query to determine an intent or intents for each identified domain, where the intent corresponds to the action to be performed that is responsive to the query…. The output from the NLU processing (which may include tagged text, commands, etc.) may then be sent to a command processor 290, which may be located on a same or separate server 120 as part of system 100. The destination command processor 290 may be determined based on the NLU output. For example, if the NLU output includes a command to play music, the destination command processor 290 may be a music playing application, such as one located on audio device 110 or in a music playing appliance, configured to execute a music playing command.).
Piersol teaches a system and method for capturing and processing portions of a spoken utterance command that may occur before a wakeword. Piersol also teaches buffers incoming audio and indicates locations in the audio where the utterance changes. Piersol further teaches locally processing the incoming audio and convert into text words then transfer the text words to server for NLU processing [0019-0023, 0027, 0034-0036, 0037-0052, 0087]. Piersol does not explicitly teach locally buffering text words associated to the audio data.
However, Woo teaches an electronic device and a method for activating a voice recognition service using user wake words. Especially, Woo teaches the electronic device can buffering user wake words and when a predetermined time passes, the processor may automatically delete the registered user wake word from the memory [0066-0068, 0123, 0152].
Piersol and Woo are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of capturing and processing spoken utterances. At the time before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to buffer extracted words from audio data for a predetermined amount of duration after user provides a spoken utterance command to transmit the extracted words for NLU processing. The suggestion for doing so would have been obvious to temporally buffer the locally generated ASR result from audio data before send it to server for further processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to an ordinary person skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Woo with the teachings of Piersol for the purpose of locally buffering the text word associated to the audio data as specified in the claims 21, 33, and 41.
As to claim 22, Piersol teaches detect a wake phrase spoken in the audio; and cause the transmission of the first information and the second information to the cloud server after the detection of the wake phrase [0019-0023, 0027, 0034-0036, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 23, Piersol teaches the first words are spoken prior to the wake phrase [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 24, Piersol teaches the first information includes at least some of the first words [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 25, Piersol teaches the second information includes at least some of the second words [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 26, Piersol teaches further including a camera to capture an image, the image to provide context for at least one of the first information or the second information [0025].
As to claim 27, Piersol teaches further including a display [0076].
As to claim 28, Piersol teaches one or more of the at least one processor circuit is to cause the transmission of the first information and the second information to the cloud server in a same transmission [Figs. 1, 8] [0021, 0097].
As to claim 29, Piersol teaches the first words are identified in the audio without sending the audio to the cloud server [0034].
As to claim 30, Piersol teaches the at least one processor circuit is distinct and separate from the cloud server [0027, 0034-0036].
As to claim 34, Piersol teaches the instructions are to cause one or more of the at least one processor circuit to cause transmission of both the first information and the second information to the cloud server after detection of a wake phrase [0019-0023, 0027, 0034-0036, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 35, Piersol teaches the first words are spoken prior to the wake phrase [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 36, Piersol teaches the first information includes at least some of the first words [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 37, Piersol teaches the second information includes at least some of the second words [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 38, Piersol teaches the instructions are to cause one or more of the at least one processor circuit to cause a camera to capture an image, the image to provide context for at least one of the first information or the second information [0025].
As to claim 39, Piersol teaches one or more of the at least one processor circuit is to cause the transmission of the first information and the second information to the cloud server in a same transmission [Figs. 1, 8] [0021, 0097].
As to claim 40, Piersol teaches the audio containing the first words is not transmitted to the cloud server [0034].
As to claim 42, Piersol teaches the processing means is to cause the transmission of the first information and the second information to the cloud server after detection of a wake phrase [0019-0023, 0027, 0034-0036, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 43, Piersol teaches the first words are spoken prior to the wake phrase [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 44, Piersol teaches the first information includes at least some of the first words [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 45, Piersol teaches the second information includes at least some of the second words [0019-0023, 0037-0052, 0087].
As to claim 46, Piersol teaches means for capturing an image, the image to provide context for at least one of the first information or the second information [0025].
As to claim 47, Piersol teaches the processing means is to cause the transmission of the first information and the second information to the cloud server in a common transmission [Figs. 1, 8] [0021, 0097].
Claim(s) 31-32 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Piersol in view of Woo, and further in view of Hodge et al. (hereinafter “Hodge”) (US 20100079508 A1).
As to claim 31, Piersol teaches the system further including an image sensor and wireless communication circuitry [Figs. 1, 8] [0021,0025, 0097]. Piersol and Woo do not explicitly teach an operation mode controller to cause the wireless communication circuitry to switch between different operation modes based on an analysis of images captured by the image sensor, different ones of the operation modes to consume different amounts of power.
However, Hodge teaches a computing device including an image sensor and wireless communication circuitry. Especially, Hodge teaches an operation mode controller to cause the wireless communication circuitry to switch between different operation modes based on an analysis of images captured by the image sensor, different ones of the operation modes to consume different amounts of power [a wireless communication circuitry switch between different operation mode based on user’s interactivity with the computing device to conserve power consumption] [0050-0054, 0064-0069, 0073-0081, 0099].
It would have been obvious to an ordinary person skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Hodge with the teachings of Piersol and Woo for the purpose of operating a wireless communication circuitry to switch between different mode based on user’s interactivity captured by the image sensor to determine whether to switch the wireless communication into a lower power state to conserve power consumption.
As to claim 32, Hodge teaches an image sensor, the image sensor having a plurality of different power modes; and an image mode controller to cause the image sensor to switch between ones of the different power modes based on an analysis of image data generated by the image sensor [0066, 0102-0105].
Conclusion
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/ZHIPENG WANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2115
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