1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to retrieval of information or processing of commands through a speech interface and/or a combination of a speech interface and a non-speech interface. More specifically, the invention provides a fully integrated environment that allows users to submit natural language questions and commands via the speech interface and the non-speech interface. Information may be obtained from a wide range of disciplines, making local and network inquiries to obtain the information and presenting results in a natural manner, even in cases where the question asked or the responses received are incomplete, ambiguous or subjective. The invention may further allow users to control devices and systems either locally or remotely.
2. Background of the Related Art
A machine's ability to communicate with humans in a natural manner remains a difficult problem. Cognitive research on human interaction shows that verbal communication, such as a person asking a question or giving a command, typically relies heavily on context and domain knowledge of the target person. By contrast, machine-based queries (e.g., questions, commands, requests, and/or other types of communications) may be highly structured and may not be inherently natural to the human user. Thus, verbal communications and machine processing of queries taken from the verbal communications may be fundamentally incompatible. Yet the ability to allow a person to make natural language speech-based queries remains a desirable goal.
Speech recognition has steadily improved in accuracy and today is successfully used in a wide range of applications. Natural language processing has been applied to the parsing of speech queries. Yet, current systems do not reliably provide a complete environment for users to submit verbal and/or textual communications through natural language queries that are processed to provide natural responses. There remain a number of significant barriers to creation of a complete speech-based and/or non-speech-based natural language query and response environment.