CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 119(a), this application claims the benefit of earlier filing date and right of priority to Korean Patent Application No. 10-2019-0059391, filed on May 21, 2019, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

1. Field of the Invention

The present disclosure relates to a speech recognition method and a speech recognition device, and more specifically, to a speech recognition method and a speech recognition device in which a spoken utterance is buffered, a wake-up word and a spoken sentence are isolated from the buffered spoken utterance, and if the wake-up word is present in the spoken utterance, the spoken sentence is isolated and processed regardless of the position of the spoken sentence in the spoken utterance.

2. Description of Related Art

As technology continues to advance, various services using a speech recognition technology are introduced in a number of fields in recent years. A speech recognition technology can be understood as a series of processes including understanding utterances spoken by a speaker and converting the spoken utterances to text data which is recognizable and usable by computers. Furthermore, the speech recognition services using the speech recognition technology may include a series of processes for recognizing a user's spoken utterance and providing a service appropriate thereto.

A speech recognition device using the speech recognition technology described above starts to recognize speech only when a designated command is inputted. The command initiating the speech recognition may be referred to as a wake-up word, and the features associated with the wake-up word recognition, since they typically pose a relatively low computational load, may be always running in the background in a speech recognition device. More specifically, a wake-up word is a word preregistered in the speech recognition device, the word which, when present in the user's spoken utterance, can be recognized by the speech recognition device to enable the speech recognition device to perform a designated task according to a subsequently inputted voice command.

In particular, Related Art 1 and Related Art 2 disclose a technology that enables an electronic device to recognize user's audio signals, and to perform a speech recognition operation when the recognized user's audio signals correspond to a preset keyword (wake-up word).

However, since the speech recognition function is initiated only after the wake-up word is recognized, when the wake-up word is positioned after the spoken sentence, Related Art 1 and Related Art 2 may fail to recognize a spoken sentence that precedes the wake-up word.

The background art described above may be technical information retained by the present inventors in order to derive the present disclosure or acquired by the present inventors along the process of deriving the present disclosure, and thus is not necessarily a known art disclosed to the general public before the filing of the present application.

RELATED ART DOCUMENT

Patent Document

Related Art 1: Korean Patent Laid-Open Publications No. 10-2016-0064258 (published on Jun. 8, 2016)

Related Art 2: Korean Patent Laid-Open Publications No. 10-2009-0123396 (published on Dec. 2, 2009)

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

One aspect of the present disclosure aims to address the shortcoming associated with the related art that is unable to recognize the spoken sentence in a user's spoken utterance when the wake-up word is positioned after the spoken sentence.

Another aspect of the present disclosure aims to address the shortcoming associated with the related art that is unable to recognize the spoken sentence in a user's spoken utterance when the wake-up word is positioned within the spoken sentence.

Another aspect of the present disclosure aims to address the shortcoming associated with the related art that is unable to recognize a spoken sentence positioned before the wake-up word in a user's spoken utterance containing two or more spoken sentences.

Another aspect of the present disclosure aims to address, by using optimal process resources, the shortcoming associated with the related art that is unable to recognize a voice command when the wake-up word is positioned after the spoken sentence intended as the voice command.

Advantages and features of the present disclosure and methods for achieving them will become apparent from the descriptions of aspects herein below with reference to the accompanying drawings. However, the present disclosure is not limited to the aspects disclosed herein but may be implemented in various different forms. The aspects are provided to make the description of the present disclosure thorough and to fully convey the scope of the present disclosure to those skilled in the art. It is to be noted that the scope of the present disclosure is defined only by the claims.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, a speech recognition method, even with a spoken utterance that is unconfirmed for the presence of a wake-up word, temporarily stores a section of the spoken utterance, and if the wake-up word is present therein, analyzes the stored section of the spoken utterance to enable execution of a voice command uttered before the wake-up word.

Furthermore, a speech recognition method according to an embodiment of the present disclosure includes: buffering an inputted spoken utterance; comparing the buffered spoken utterance to a preset wake-up word to determine whether the preset wake-up word is present in the spoken utterance; in response to the preset wake-up word in the spoken utterance, activating a speech recognition function, and isolating, from the spoken utterance, a spoken sentence as a voice command, without the wake-up word; and processing the spoken sentence and outputting a processing result.

Conventionally in the related art, only spoken sentences that are positioned after a wake-up word in a spoken utterance were able to be isolated and processed; however, the speech recognition method according to the present embodiment may buffer a spoken utterance, and if the wake-up word is present in the buffered spoken utterance, may activate the speech recognition function, isolate and process a spoken sentence regardless of the position of the spoken sentence in the spoken utterance, thus resulting in improvements in speech recognition processing performance.

In addition, the buffering further includes buffering by varying a buffering volume or time in accordance with an environment condition under which the spoken utterance is inputted.

Through the buffering according to the present embodiment, a spoken utterance for performing accurate speech recognition may be obtained by varying the buffering volume or time for the spoken utterance in accordance with an environment condition under which the spoken utterance is inputted. Examples of the environment condition include, but are not limited to, a time at which the spoken utterance is inputted, a place at which the spoken utterance is inputted, a pitch of the spoken utterance, an accuracy of the spoken utterance, a speed of the spoken utterance.

Furthermore, the isolating may further include isolating, from the spoken utterance, the spoken sentence preceding the wake-up word; isolating, from the spoken utterance, a first spoken segment preceding the wake-up word and a second spoken segment following the wake-up word without the wake-up word, without the wake-up word positioned within the spoken sentence; and isolating, from the spoken utterance containing two or more spoken sentences, the two or more spoken sentences without the wake-up word positioned therebetween.

Through the isolating according to the present embodiment, if the wake-up word is present in the spoken utterance, the speech recognition function for recognizing the contents of a voice command may be activated, and regardless of the position of the spoken sentence, the spoken sentence as a voice command without the wake-up word may be isolated from the spoken utterance and processed, and a processing result may be outputted, thereby resulting in improvements in speech recognition processing performance.

In addition, the outputting may include outputting the processing result of a single voice command formed by combining the first spoken segment preceding the wake-up word and the second spoken segment following the wake-up word; and sequentially outputting a result of sequentially processing the two or more spoken sentences or outputting, at once, a result of batch processing the two or more spoken sentences.

Through the outputting according to the present embodiment, various output results may be provided corresponding to user's spoken utterances, thus increasing reliability of the speech recognition device.

The speech recognition device according to one embodiment of the present disclosure may include a buffer configured to buffer an inputted spoken utterance, a determiner configured to compare the spoken utterance buffered by the buffer to a preset wake-up word, to determine whether the preset wake-up word is present in the spoken utterance, an isolator configured to activate speech recognition function in response to the preset wake-up word present in the spoken utterance and to isolate a spoken sentence as a voice command without the wake-up word from the spoken utterance, and a controller configured to control such that the spoken sentence is processed and a processing result is outputted.

By the speech recognition device according to the present embodiment, a spoken utterance may be buffered, and in response to the wake-up word present in the buffered spoken utterance, the speech recognition function may be activated, and regardless of the position of the spoken sentence, the spoken sentence may be isolated and processed, and a processing result may be outputted, thus improving the speech recognition processing performance.

Furthermore, the speech recognition device according to the present embodiment may further include a variator which is configured to vary the buffering volume or time of the buffer in accordance with an environment condition under which the spoken utterance is inputted.

Through the variator according to the present embodiment, a spoken utterance for performing accurate speech recognition may be obtained by varying the buffering volume or time for the spoken utterance in accordance with an environment condition under which the spoken utterance is inputted. Examples of the environment condition include, but are not limited to, a time at which the spoken utterance is inputted, a place at which the spoken utterance is inputted, a pitch of the spoken utterance, an accuracy of the spoken utterance, and a speed of the spoken utterance.

In addition, the isolator may isolate, from the spoken utterance, the spoken sentence preceding the wake-up word; isolate, from the spoken utterance, a first spoken segment preceding the wake-up word and a second spoken segment following the wake-up word, without the wake-up word, wherein the wake-up word is positioned within the spoken sentence; and isolate, from the spoken utterance containing two or more spoken sentences, the two or more spoken sentences without the wake-up word, wherein the wake-up word is positioned between the two or more spoken sentences.

Through the isolator according to the present embodiment, if the wake-up word is present in the spoken utterance, the speech recognition function for recognizing the contents of a voice command may be activated, and regardless of the position of the spoken sentence, the spoken sentence as a voice command without the wake-up word may be isolated and processed from the spoken utterance, and a processing result may be outputted, thereby improving the speech recognition processing performance.

In addition, the controller may control such that a processing result of a single voice command formed by combining together a first spoken segment preceding the wake-up word and a second spoken segment following the wake-up word can be outputted; control such that a result of sequentially processing two or more spoken sentences can be sequentially outputted; or control such that a result of batch processing two or more spoken sentences can be outputted at once.

Through the controller according to the present embodiment, various output results may be provided corresponding to user's spoken utterances, thereby increasing reliability of the speech recognition device.

According to the present disclosure, a spoken utterance may be buffered, and in response to a wake-up word present in the buffered spoken utterance, a speech recognition function may be activated, and a spoken sentence, regardless of its position within the spoken utterance, may be isolated and processed, and a processing result may be outputted, improving the speech recognition processing performance.

In addition, by varying a buffering time for the spoken utterance in accordance with an environment condition under which the spoken utterance is inputted, the spoken utterance for carrying out accurate speech recognition may be obtained.

In addition, various output results may be provided corresponding to user's spoken utterances, thus increasing reliability of the speech recognition device.

In addition, a voice command intended by a user may be recognized and processed only by using optimal processor resources, thus improving the power efficiency of the speech recognition device.

Advantages of the present disclosure are not limited to those described in the embodiments of the present disclosure, and other advantages from the following description. Furthermore, other advantages will be more clearly understood by those having ordinary skill in the art from the following description.

