Adapting automatic speech recognition parameters based on hot word characteristics.

Abstract

A method (300) for optimizing speech recognition includes receiving a first acoustic segment (121) characterizing a hotword detected by a hotword detector (110) in streaming audio (118) captured by a user device (102), extracting one or more hotword attributes (210) from the first acoustic segment, and adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model (320) based on the one or more hotword attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment. After adjusting the speech recognition parameters of the ASR model, the method also includes processing a second acoustic segment (122) using the ASR model to generate a speech recognition result (322). The second acoustic segment characterizes a spoken query / command following the first acoustic segment in the streaming audio captured by the user device.

Description

[Technical field]

[0001] SUMMARY This disclosure relates to adapting automatic speech recognition parameters based on hot word characteristics. [Background technology]

[0002] A voice-enabled environment (e.g., at home, at work, at school, in an automobile, etc.) allows a user to speak queries or commands out loud to a computer-based system that processes and responds to the query and / or performs functions based on the command. A voice-enabled environment can be implemented using a network of connected microphone devices distributed in various rooms and areas of the environment. These devices may use hot words to help identify when a given utterance is directed to the system as opposed to an utterance directed to another individual present in the environment. Thus, the device may operate in a sleep or hibernation state and wake up only if a detected utterance contains the hot word. Once awake, the device can proceed to perform more expensive processing, such as full on-device automatic speech recognition (ASR) or server-based ASR. Summary of the Invention [Means for solving the problem]

[0003] One aspect of the present disclosure provides a method for optimizing speech recognition. The method includes receiving, in a data processing hardware, a first acoustic segment characterizing a hot word detected by a hot word detector in streaming audio captured by a user device, extracting, by the data processing hardware, one or more hot word attributes from the first acoustic segment, and adjusting, by the data processing hardware, one or more speech recognition parameters of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model based on the one or more hot word attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment. After adjusting the speech recognition parameters of the ASR model, the method also includes processing, by the data processing hardware, a second acoustic segment using the ASR model to generate a speech recognition result. The second acoustic segment characterizes a spoken query / command following the first acoustic segment in the streaming audio captured by the user device.

[0004] Implementations of the present disclosure may include one or more of the following optional features: In some implementations, the one or more hot word attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment include at least one of a pause duration measure, a speech rate measure, a pitch measure, an ASR prediction measure, or a volume / tone measure. In some examples, the method also includes receiving, in the data processing hardware when the first acoustic segment, a confidence score indicating a confidence regarding the likelihood that the streaming audio captured by the user device contains the hot word that the hot word detector was trained to detect. In these examples, extracting one or more hot word attributes from the first acoustic segment includes extracting an ASR prediction measure indicating the likelihood that the ASR model will accurately recognize the query / command portion in the second acoustic segment. Here, adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model may include: decreasing the number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model and / or decreasing a beam search width of the ASR model if the confidence score is greater than a confidence score threshold; or increasing the number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model and / or increasing a beam search width of the ASR model if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold. Additionally or alternatively, adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model may include: adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters to bias the recognition hypotheses toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment if the confidence score is greater than the confidence score threshold; or adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters to not bias the recognition hypotheses toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold.

[0005] In some implementations, extracting one or more hot word attributes from the first acoustic segment includes extracting a pitch measure specifying a range of frequencies associated with the first acoustic segment, and adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters includes adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters by focusing on the specified frequency range and applying frequency-based filtering to the second acoustic segment when processing the second acoustic segment to generate the speech recognition result. If a hot word attribute of the one or more hot word attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment includes a tone and volume score specifying a tone and volume of voice when speaking the hot word, the method may also include influencing, by the data processing hardware, a natural language understanding (NLU) module when performing query interpretation on the generated speech recognition result.

[0006] In some implementations, if one of the one or more hotword attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment includes a pause duration measurement indicating the extent to which the speaker paused during the utterance of the hotword and / or between the utterance of the hotword and the utterance of the query / command, the method also includes instructing, by the data processing hardware, the end pointer to either increase or decrease the duration of the endpoint timeout period from a default value based on the pause duration measurement. Additionally or alternatively, if one of the one or more hotword attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment includes a speech rate measurement indicating the rate at which the speaker spoke the hotword in the streaming audio, the method may also include instructing, by the data processing hardware, the end pointer to either increase or decrease the duration of the endpoint timeout period from a default value based on the speech rate measurement. In some examples, the one or more hotword attributes are extracted from the first acoustic segment using at least one of a neural network-based model or a heuristic-based model.

[0007] Another aspect of the present disclosure provides a system for optimizing speech recognition. The system includes data processing hardware and memory hardware in communication with the data processing hardware, storing instructions that, when executed in the data processing hardware, cause the data processing hardware to perform operations including receiving a first acoustic segment characterizing a hot word detected by a hot word detector in streaming audio captured by a user device, extracting one or more hot word attributes from the first acoustic segment, and adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model based on the one or more hot word attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment. After adjusting the speech recognition parameters of the ASR model, the operations also include processing a second acoustic segment using the ASR model to generate a speech recognition result. The second acoustic segment characterizes a spoken query / command following the first acoustic segment in the streaming audio captured by the user device.

[0008] This aspect may include one or more of the following optional features: In some implementations, the one or more hot word attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment include at least one of a pause duration measure, a speech rate measure, a pitch measure, an ASR prediction measure, or a volume / tone measure. In some examples, the operations also include receiving a confidence score indicating a confidence regarding the likelihood that the streaming audio captured by the user device when receiving the first acoustic segment contains the hot word that the hot word detector was trained to detect. In these examples, extracting the one or more hot word attributes from the first acoustic segment includes extracting an ASR prediction measure indicating the likelihood that the ASR model will accurately recognize the query / command portion in the second acoustic segment. Here, adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model may include decreasing the number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model and / or decreasing a beam search width of the ASR model if the confidence score is greater than the confidence score threshold, or increasing the number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model and / or increasing a beam search width of the ASR model if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold. Additionally or alternatively, adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model may include adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters to bias the recognition hypotheses toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment if the confidence score is greater than the confidence score threshold, or adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters to not bias the recognition hypotheses toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold.

[0009] In some implementations, extracting one or more hot word attributes from the first acoustic segment includes extracting a pitch measure specifying a frequency range associated with the first acoustic segment, and adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters includes adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters by focusing on the specified frequency range when processing the second acoustic segment to generate the speech recognition result, and applying frequency-based filtering to the second acoustic segment. If a hot word attribute of the one or more hot word attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment includes a tone and volume score specifying a tone and volume of voice when speaking the hot word, the operations may also include affecting a natural language understanding (NLU) module when performing query interpretation on the generated speech recognition result.

[0010] In some implementations, if one of the one or more hotword attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment includes a pause duration measurement indicating the extent to which the speaker paused during the utterance of the hotword and / or between the utterance of the hotword and the utterance of the query / command, the operations also include instructing the end pointer to either increase or decrease the duration of the endpoint timeout period from a default value based on the pause duration measurement. Additionally or alternatively, if one of the one or more hotword attributes extracted from the first acoustic segment includes a speech rate measurement indicating the rate at which the speaker spoke the hotword in the streaming audio, the operations also include instructing the end pointer to either increase or decrease the duration of the endpoint timeout period from a default value based on the speech rate measurement. In some examples, the one or more hotword attributes are extracted from the first acoustic segment using at least one of a neural network-based model or a heuristic-based model.

[0011] The details of one or more implementations of the disclosure are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other aspects, features, and advantages will become apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims. [Brief description of the drawings]

[0012] [Figure 1] FIG. 1 illustrates an example system for optimizing speech recognition based on hot word attributes extracted from spoken audio. [Diagram 2] FIG. 2 illustrates an example attribute extractor configured to extract one or more hot word attributes from acoustic features. [Diagram 3] 4 is a flowchart of an exemplary arrangement of operations for a method of optimizing speech recognition. [Figure 4] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an example computing device that can be used to implement the systems and methods described herein. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0013] Like reference symbols in the various drawings indicate like elements.

[0014] Performing accurate speech recognition is difficult due to the fact that automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines must recognize and understand short, noisy, free-flowing utterances spoken by all users in a single language or location. To improve accuracy, ASR engines often rely on techniques such as incorporating context into the speech recognition process, as humans do when communicating with each other. Incorporating context can bias the speech recognition results toward improved accuracy. Often, the user's location and user preferences are used as context to improve speech recognition.

[0015] Since hot words are typically spoken to invoke an assistant-enabled device to initiate a subsequent spoken query, the portion of the audio data that characterizes the hot word captured by the assistant-enabled device is likely to correlate with the remaining portion of the audio data that corresponds to the spoken query. Thus, the audio data that characterizes the hot word may contain important information for use in assisting a speech recognizer to accurately and / or more efficiently recognize queries spoken by a user. Implementations herein are directed to deriving a context signal from the audio data that characterizes the detected hot word and using the context signal to optimize speech recognition for audio following the hot word. As described in more detail below, the context signal derived from the audio data that characterizes the detected hot word may include speech rate or pause duration during and / or after speaking the hot word, frequency / pitch of the audio data that characterizes the hot word, confidence score and / or noise level output by a hot word detector that detects the presence of the hot word in the streaming audio, and other speech attributes such as tone and volume.

[0016] As shown with reference to FIG. 1, in some implementations, an exemplary system 100 includes user devices 102 associated with one or more users 10 and communicating with a remote system 111 via a network 104. The user devices 102 may correspond to computing devices such as mobile phones, computers (laptop or desktop), tablets, smart speakers / displays, smart appliances, smart headphones, wearables, vehicle infotainment systems, etc., and are equipped with data processing hardware 103 and memory hardware 107. The user devices 102 include or communicate with one or more microphones 106 for capturing speech from the respective users 10. The remote system 111 may be a single computer, multiple computers, or a distributed system (e.g., cloud environment) with scalable / elastic computing resources 113 (e.g., data processing hardware) and / or storage resources 115 (e.g., memory hardware).

[0017] The user device 102 includes a hot word detector 110 (also referred to as a hot word detection model) configured to detect the presence of hot words in the streaming audio 118 without performing semantic analysis or speech recognition processing on the streaming audio 118. The user device 102 also includes an acoustic feature extractor 105, which may be implemented as part of the hot word detector 110 or as a separate component from the hot word detector 110. The acoustic feature extractor is configured to extract acoustic features from the utterance 119. For example, the acoustic feature extractor 105 may receive streaming audio 118 captured by one or more microphones 106 of the user device 102 corresponding to the utterance 119 uttered by the user 10 and extract acoustic features 120. The acoustic features 120 may include Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) or filter bank energies calculated over a window of the audio signal.

[0018] The hot word detector 110 may receive acoustic features 120 extracted by the acoustic feature extractor 105, and based on the extracted features 120, the hot word classifier 112 is configured to classify whether the utterance 119 contains a particular hot word uttered by the user 10. The user device may include multiple hot word classifiers 112, each trained to detect different hot words associated with a particular term / phrase. These hot words may be predefined hot words and / or custom hot words assigned by the user 10. In some implementations, the hot word classifier 112 includes a trained neural network (e.g., a stored neural network) received from the remote system 111 via the network 104.

[0019] In some examples, the hotword detector 110 includes a cascaded hotword detection architecture including an initial coarse-stage hotword classifier followed by a refinement-stage hotword classifier, where the coarse-stage hotword classifier is configured to first detect the presence of a hotword in the acoustic features 120 before invoking the refinement-stage hotword detector to receive the acoustic features 120 and determine whether a hotword is detected in the streaming audio 118. The coarse-stage hotword classifier may run on a first processor, such as a digital signal processor (DSP), and the refinement-stage hotword classifier may run on a second processor, such as an application processor (AP) or CPU, which consumes more power during operation than the first processor. The coarse-stage hotword classifier resident on the first processor may include a smaller model size than the model associated with the refinement-stage hotword classifier and is computationally efficient to roughly screen the input streaming audio 118 for hotword detection. Thus, the first processor may be "always on" such that the coarse stage hotword classifier is always running to roughly screen hotword candidates in the streaming audio 118, while all other components of the user device 102, including the main AP (e.g., the second processor), are in a sleep state / mode to conserve battery life. Meanwhile, the fine stage hotword classifier resident in the main AP includes a larger model size and provides more computational output than the coarse stage hotword classifier to provide more accurate detection of hotwords initially detected by the coarse stage hotword detector. Thus, the fine stage hotword classifier may be more strict in determining whether a hotword is present in the audio 118. Thus, in an implementation in which the hotword detector 110 includes a cascaded hotword detection architecture, once a candidate hotword is detected, the DSP triggers the main AP to transition from sleep mode to hotword detection mode to run the fine stage hotword classifier.

[0020] In the illustrated example, the hot word classifier 112 is trained to detect the presence of the hot word "Hey Google" in the acoustic features 120, which causes the user device 102 to wake up from a sleep or hibernation state and trigger voice recognition for the hot word and / or one or more other terms following the hot word, e.g., a voice query / command following the hot word in the streaming audio 118. Hot words can be useful for "always-on" systems that may pick up sounds that are not directed to the voice-enabled user device 102. For example, the use of hot words can help the device 102 identify when a given utterance 119 is directed to the device 102, as opposed to utterances directed to another individual present in the environment or background utterances. In doing so, the device 102 can avoid triggering computationally intensive processing, e.g., voice recognition and semantic interpretation, for sounds or utterances that do not include the hot word.

[0021] The hotword classifier 112 may output a confidence score 130 that is binary, e.g., "yes" or "no," and indicates whether the utterance is classified as likely to contain a hotword (e.g., "hey Google") that the classifier 112 was trained to detect in the acoustic features 120 extracted from the streaming audio 118. Additionally or alternatively, the hotword classifier 112 may output a confidence score 130 that is non-binary, e.g., a 0%, 10%, 30%, 75%, or 95% confidence score that may indicate a confidence regarding the likelihood that the utterance contains a respective hotword that the classifier 112 was trained to detect in the acoustic features 120 extracted from the streaming audio 118. For example, in response to receiving an acoustic feature extracted for the utterance "OK, Google," the hotword classifier 112 may output a confidence score 130 of "yes, 85%." The confidence score may additionally or alternatively be represented by a numerical range between "0" and "1," e.g., "0.25," which corresponds to 25%.

[0022] In some examples, the hotword classifier 112 is configured to detect a hotword event, indicating the presence of a hotword in the streaming audio 118, when the confidence score 130 output from the hotword classifier 112 meets a hotword detection threshold. For example, the hotword detection threshold may be 80% or 0.8, such that a hotword event is detected when the confidence score 130 is equal to or greater than 80%, i.e., 0.8. Upon detecting a hotword event, the hotword detector 110 provides a first acoustic segment 121 clipped from the acoustic features 120 to an attribute extractor 200 configured to extract one or more hotword attributes 210 that may be used as a context signal for optimizing speech recognition of the utterance 119 of the user 10 by an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system 301. The first acoustic segment 121 includes relevant acoustic features associated with the presence of the hotword detected by the hotword detector 110. The hot word detector 110 also provides the ASR system 301 with a second acoustic segment 122 clipped from the acoustic features 120, such that the second acoustic segment 122 includes a portion of the speech 119 captured by the user device 102 in the streaming audio 118 following the first acoustic segment 121. Typically, the first acoustic segment 121 is of a fixed duration generally sufficient to include audio features associated with a designated hot word. However, the second acoustic segment 122 may have a variable duration that includes audio captured by the user device 102 while the microphone 106 was open and the user was still speaking. The second acoustic segment 122 may capture a query-type utterance that requires further processing (e.g., automatic speech recognition and / or semantic interpretation) by the ASR system 301 for one or more terms to identify a query or command in the audio data.

[0023] 2 illustrates a schematic diagram of the example attribute extractor 200 of FIG. 1 extracting one or more hotword attributes 210 from one or more hotword input features 202. The hotword input features 202 may include a first acoustic segment 121 cut from the acoustic features 120 by the hotword classifier 112, a confidence score 130 indicating the likelihood that the utterance 119 contains a hotword, and a hotword embedding 204 that encodes the first acoustic segment 121 that characterizes the portion of the utterance 119 that contains the hotword. The hotword classifier 112 may generate the hotword embedding 204 when it performs hotword detection on the incoming acoustic features 120 to determine whether a hotword is present. The hotword input features 202 may additionally include a portion of the streaming audio 118 that contains the hotword.

[0024] In some examples, the attribute extractor 200 includes one or more heuristic models 240 and / or one or more neural network models 260. For example, the attribute extractor 200 may implement a heuristic model 240 that detects pause periods during and / or after the utterance of a hot word. The heuristic model 240 may extract a pause period measurement as one of the hot word attributes that indicates the extent to which the user 10 paused during and / or after the utterance of the hot word and before the utterance of the query / command portion of the utterance. As discussed in more detail below, the end pointer 310 of the ASR system 301 may increase or decrease the endpoint timeout from a default value based on the pause period measurement. That is, a higher pause period measurement indicating that the user 10 paused longer than a typical user and / or paused longer than the user 10 normally does when speaking the hot word may result in the end pointer 310 increasing / extending the endpoint timeout.

[0025] Based on the confidence score 130 output by the hot word classifier 112, the same or a different heuristic model 240 (or optionally the neural network model 260) of the attribute extractor 200 may extract an ASR prediction measure (e.g., an ASR prediction score) as one hot word attribute among the hot word attributes 210 indicating the likelihood that an ASR model 320 of the ASR system will correctly recognize the query / command portion of the utterance 119. For example, a higher hot word confidence score 130 provides a correlation that because the hot word classifier 112 was able to reliably detect the presence of the hot word in the streaming audio 118, the ASR model 320 is more likely to correctly recognize the query / command portion of the utterance 119 when performing speech recognition on the second acoustic segment 122.

[0026] In some implementations, the attribute extractor 200 implements a neural network model 260 configured to extract a speech speed measure (e.g., speech speed score) from one or more hot word input features of the hot word input features 202 as one hot word attribute of the hot word attributes 210 indicating the speed (e.g., how fast / slow) at which the user 10 spoke the hot word portion of the utterance 119. Here, the neural network model 260 may include a deep neural network trained through machine learning in a supervised and / or unsupervised manner. Similar to the pause duration measure, the speech speed measure may be utilized by the end pointer 310 of the ASR system 301 to increase / decrease the endpoint timeout from a default value. That is, a lower speech speed measure indicating that the user 10 spoke the hot word portion of the utterance 119 slower than a typical user and / or slower than the user 10 normally speaks when speaking the hot word may result in the end pointer 310 increasing / extending the endpoint timeout. Similarly, a higher speech rate measurement may result in the end pointer decreasing / shortening the end point timeout.

[0027] The same or different neural network model 260 may be configured to extract a pitch measure (e.g., high / low pitch) from one or more of the hot word input features 202. The pitch measure may be referred to as a pitch score. As described in more detail below, when performing speech recognition on the query / command portion of the utterance 119, the pitch measure may be provided to the ASR system 301 to provide parameters instructing the ASR model 320 to focus on a particular frequency / pitch range of the input features (e.g., in the second acoustic segment 122). In some examples, the neural network model extracts / estimates the pitch measure using techniques described in SPICE, Self-Supervised Pitch Estimation, available at https: / / arxiv.org / pdf / 1910.11664.pdf, which is incorporated herein by reference.

[0028] In some examples, the same or different neural network model 260 is trained to extract tone and volume scores from one or more hot word input features 202 as one hot word attribute of the hot word attributes 210 for use in optimizing the ASR model 320 to recognize the query / command portion of the utterance 119. The tone and volume of the user's voice can be used to influence the natural language understanding (NLU) module 330 of the ASR system 301 when interpreting the query / command portion of the utterance. For example, a tone and volume score extracted from a hot word indicating a tired voice can influence the NLU module 330 to request relaxing music from a music service if the query / command is "play music," and a tone and volume score indicating an enthusiastic voice can influence the NLU module 330 to request party music from a music service instead for the same query command "play music."

[0029] Referring back to FIG. 1 , the user device 102 captures utterances 119 uttered by the user 10 associated with the user 10 speaking at a slow speech rate and including one or more long pauses between terms. That is, the speech rate may be slower than a typical speech rate uttered by a typical user and / or may be slower than a speech rate typically uttered by the user 10. Similarly, the pauses between one or more of the terms may be associated with and / or consist of a longer pause period than a normal pause period used by a typical user. The utterances 119 captured in the streaming audio 118 by the user device 102 include, "Hey, Goo, Guru, text August West, 'Put on your jacket...to the dock'." Here, the user 10 speaks the hotword Hey Google as "Hey Goo Gul" with a long pause between the first term "Hey" and the second term "Google", in addition to the user pronouncing the second term at a slower speech rate as seen by the user's hesitation between the syllables "Gul" and "Gul". The query / command portion of the utterance 119 includes the command "Text August West" with the message content "Put on your jacket...to the pier". Here, the user 10 also speaks with a long pause between the terms "jacket" and "to", splitting the message content into two parts, e.g., "put on your jacket" and "to the pier". In some examples, the endpoint 310 executing in the user device 102 (or remote system 111) is configured to endpoint the utterance upon detecting a non-speech period of at least a default duration. Here, the long pause between the terms "jacket" and "to" in the message content of the utterance may be longer than the default value of the endpoint timeout period in the end pointer, causing the end pointer 310 to prematurely end the utterance 119 after the term "jacket" and cut off the remaining message content "to the pier."For example, using the default value of the endpoint timeout, the endpoint pointer 310 may instruct the user device 102 to close the microphone 106 after the term jacket so that no audio is captured. As a result, the ASR model 320 generates only the notation "Text August West: 'Put on your jacket'" and passes an instruction to the text application to send a text message with the message content of put on a jacket to the user device associated with August West. In this scenario, the user 10 may be August's father, and August may be confused about when and where to put on his jacket because he is meeting his father for lunch today and is going to the docks with his brother later in the evening. To avoid premature endpointing, the endpoint pointer 310 may extend the duration of the endpointing timeout from the default value based on the hot word attributes 210 extracted from the hot word by the attribute extractor 200, which indicate that the user 10 spoke the hot word at a slow speech rate and with long pauses between terms and syllables. By extending the duration of the endpoint timeout from its default value, the endpoint 310 does not command the microphone 106 to close prematurely so that the entire query / command portion of the utterance 119 is captured, including all of the message content of "Put on your jacket...to the pier." Thus, the recipient (e.g., August West) receives a text message that includes the entire content of the message that the user 10 was trying to convey.

[0030] As shown with continued reference to FIG. 1 , the hotword attributes 210 extracted by the attribute extractor 200 from the first acoustic segment 121 of the acoustic features 120 (and / or the hotword embeddings 204 derived from the first acoustic segment 121) may indicate a pitch measurement that instructs the ASR model 320 to focus on a particular frequency / pitch range of the input features (e.g., in the second acoustic segment 122) when performing speech recognition on the query / command portion of the utterance 119. That is, the ASR model 320 can effectively filter out noises having frequencies outside the specified frequency range indicated by the pitch measurement, and the ASR model 320 can focus only on sounds within the specified frequency range of the second acoustic segment 122 that corresponds to the user's voice. The pitch measurement, once received by the ASR system 301, can cause the ASR model 320 to use an attention mechanism to apply frequency-based filtering or simply apply feature cropping / weighting to focus on frequencies within the specified frequency range. Additionally or alternatively, the ASR system 301 pre-processes the second acoustic segment 122 input to the ASR model 320 to better emphasize the specified frequency range as indicated by the pitch measurement.

[0031] In a non-limiting example, the attribute extractor 200 may extract a pitch measurement indicative of detection of a low-pitched voice speaking the hot word, such that the ASR model 320 applies frequency-based filtering by focusing only on the low-frequency portion when performing speech recognition on the subsequent second acoustic segment 122 conveying the query / command portion of the utterance 119. In this example, if the user 10 has small children talking to each other in the background, the frequency-based filtering will not focus on the high-frequency portion associated with the high-pitched speech of the children. In contrast to existing voice filtering techniques that require a speaker embedding conveying the speaker's voice characteristics to be obtained in advance, the pitch measurement extracted from the hot word portion of the utterance 119 can be used to identify a specified frequency range for applying frequency-based filtering. Thus, speaker enrollment is not required, and the ASR parameters can be adjusted naturally for guest speakers and for changes in the user's voice (e.g., a user who speaks quietly).

[0032] Additionally or alternatively, the hotword score 130 output from the hotword classifier 112 may be used to optimize the ASR model 320 for performing speech recognition on the second acoustic segment 122 conveying the query / command portion of the utterance 119. In the example of FIG. 1, the confidence score 130 meets the hotword detection threshold because the hotword classifier 112 detected a hotword event in the first acoustic segment 121 of the acoustic features 120. However, a higher confidence score 130 indicates that the hotword classifier 112 was more confident in detecting the presence of a hotword than a lower confidence score 130. A confidence score 130 that meets the hotword detection threshold may be affected by background noise captured in the first acoustic segment 121, causing the hotword classifier 112 to be less confident in detecting the hotword event than if no or little background noise had been captured. As a result, when the ASR system 301 performs speech recognition on the second acoustic segment 122, it may use the hot word confidence score 130 to adjust parameters of the ASR model 320.

[0033] For example, in a scenario where the hotword score 130 output from the hotword classifier 112 is low (e.g., the hotword score 130 meets the hotword detection threshold but not the higher confidence threshold), the ASR model 320, if also used for hotword recognition (e.g., server-side hotword detection) to confirm the hotword event, may adjust parameters so that the ASR model 320 does not bias the recognition results toward recognizing the hotword. In doing so, the ASR model 320 may instruct the recognition process to first ensure that the hotword is actually recognized, since the low hotword score 130 suggests that the hotword classifier 112 running on the user device 102 may have falsely detected the hotword event. Additionally, a low hotword score 130 may allow the ASR model 320 to adjust other parameters, such as considering more speech recognition hypotheses and / or increasing the beam search width, to make the ASR model 320 more robust to noisy inputs.

[0034] On the other hand, a high hotword score 130 received by the ASR model 320 (e.g., the hotword score 130 also meets a higher confidence threshold) may cause the ASR model 320 to adjust parameters such as considering a smaller number of speech recognition hypotheses or reducing the beam search width since the second acoustic segment 122 is likely to be easier to recognize. In particular, this may optimize the speech recognition process by allowing the ASR model 320 to consume less processing resources and / or achieve improved latency. These optimizations are particularly beneficial when the ASR model 320 is executed entirely on the user device 102, which has more constrained processing / memory limitations compared to a server. Instead of comparing the hotword score 130 to a threshold to determine how to adjust the ASR parameters, a linear mapping between different levels of hotword scores and corresponding ASR parameters may be accessed to determine how to adjust the ASR parameters of the model 320.

[0035] In some examples, the ASR system 301 selects among multiple ASR models 320 for recognizing an utterance based on the magnitude of the hotword score 130. For example, the ASR system 301 may select a less powerful ASR model 320 to recognize the utterance 119 based on a high hotword score or a more powerful ASR model 320 based on a low hotword score 130. In one example, the user device 102 runs a less powerful ASR model 320 and performs on-device speech recognition based on a high hotword score. In another example, the remote system 111 runs a more powerful ASR model 320 and performs server-side speech recognition based on a low hotword score 130.

[0036] In some implementations, the one or more hot word attributes 210 include a tone and volume score that indicates the tone and volume of the user 10's voice when speaking the hot word portion of the utterance 119 (e.g., "hey, goo, gulp"). In some examples, the tone and volume score may indicate that the user 10 is speaking quietly and with a tone that may provide some uncertainty as to whether the user 10 is actually directing the utterance 119 at the user device 102. In these examples, the ASR system 301 may first prompt the user 10 to confirm whether the user 10 is actually directing the utterance 119 at the user device 102 before performing voice recognition. For example, the ASR system 301 may instruct the dialogue system to generate a synthetic voice for output from the user device 102 that asks the user 10, "Did you really mean to talk to me?" A low confidence score 130 may further encourage the ASR system 301 to display a prompt to the user 10 if the tone and volume scores indicate that the user is speaking quietly and with a tone that suggests the user 10 may not be speaking into the device 102.

[0037] As described in the above reference with reference to FIG. 2, the tone and volume score may further be used to influence the NLU module 330 of the ASR system 301 when interpreting the query / command portion of the utterance. That is, the NLU module 330 may use the tone and volume score when receiving the ASR result 322 that transcribes the query / command portion of the utterance 119 and performing query interpretation on the ASR result 322. For example, the tone and volume score extracted from the hot words indicating a tired voice may influence the NLU module 330 to request relaxing music from a music service when the ASR result 322 for the query / command is "play music". Conversely, the tone and volume score indicating an enthusiastic voice may influence the NLU module 330 to request party music from a music service when interpreting the same ASR result 322 for the query / command "play music". The tone may also be used to bias the query. For example, the utterance "play relaxing music" may be biased towards terms such as "relaxing", "quiet", and "bedtime" based on the tone of the user's voice.

[0038] The ASR system 301 may train one or more machine learning models that receive one or more hotword attributes 210 as input and generate one or more instructions as output to instruct the end pointer 310 to adjust an endpoint timeout and / or to instruct the ASR model 320 to adjust model parameters (or select an appropriate ASR model 320). The one or more machine learning models may be updated based on user feedback indicating satisfaction / dissatisfaction with the speech recognition results 322 output by the ASR system 301. Additionally or alternatively, the ASR system 301 may apply static rules that map the hotword attributes 210 to instructions for configuring the ASR system 301, as discussed above.

[0039] In some additional implementations, the neural network-based models of one or more of the end pointer 310, the ASR model 320, and the NLU 330 are conditioned directly on the hotwords and / or the first acoustic segments 121 that characterize the hotwords and / or the hotword embeddings 204 instead of the explicit hotword attributes 210 extracted by the attribute extractor 200. In these implementations, the models may receive the hotword embeddings 204 (and / or the first acoustic segments 121) as side inputs along with the second acoustic segments 122 that characterize the query / command portion of the utterance for which the ASR system 301 is performing end pointing and for which speech recognition is turned on.

[0040] After or in parallel with the hot word detector 110 detecting the hot word event, the user device 102 may further perform speaker recognition on the acoustic features 120 to identify the user 10. For example, text-dependent speaker recognition may be performed on the first acoustic segment 121 characterizing the hot word by extracting a speaker embedding therefrom and comparing the speaker embedding to a reference embedding derived from an enrollment utterance of the user 10 speaking the hot word. Text-independent speaker recognition may be performed on the entire acoustic features 120 to identify the speaker of the utterance 119. Once the user 10 is identified, the ASR system 301 may be personalized or fine-tuned to the user 10 by learning an optimal set of speech recognition parameters derived from user feedback and consideration of the relationship between one or more hot word attributes extracted from the hot word portion of the utterance 119 and the subsequent query / command portion of the utterance 119.

[0041] Although the examples herein discuss extracting hotword attributes 202 from a first acoustic segment 121 that characterizes a hotword detected by the hotword detector 110, similar attributes 202 may be extracted from an earlier portion of an utterance that does not include the hotword. That is, the first acoustic segment 121 may be extracted as a prefix acoustic feature that conveys the first portion of the utterance captured in the streaming audio. This approach may be used in speech-enabled environments where the hotword does not need to be spoken initially, or may be used in conversational assistance scenarios where the microphone remains open to accept additional spoken input from the user after responding to a query, thereby eliminating the need for the user 10 to repeatedly speak the hotword.

[0042] 3 provides a flowchart of an example method 300 for optimizing speech recognition. The method 300 may be executed in a data processing hardware 410 (FIG. 4), including the data processing hardware 103 of the user device 102 or the data processing hardware 113 of a remote system (e.g., a cloud-based server) 111. In operation 302, the method 300 includes receiving a first acoustic segment 121 characterizing a hot word detected by the hot word detector 110 in a streaming audio 118 captured by the user device 102. In operation 304, the method 300 includes extracting one or more hot word attributes 210 from the first acoustic segment 121. In operation 306, the method includes adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model 320 based on the one or more hot word attributes 210 extracted from the first acoustic segment 121. At operation 308, the method 300 also includes, after adjusting the speech recognition parameters of the ASR model 320, processing the second acoustic segment 122 using the ASR model 320 to generate a speech recognition result 322. The second acoustic segment 122 characterizes a spoken query / command following the first acoustic segment 121 in the streaming audio 118 captured by the user device 102.

[0043] A software application (i.e., a software resource) may refer to computer software that causes a computing device to perform a task. In some examples, a software application may be referred to as an "application," an "app," or a "program." Exemplary applications include, but are not limited to, system diagnostic applications, system management applications, system maintenance applications, word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, messaging applications, media streaming applications, social networking applications, and gaming applications.

[0044] Non-transient memory may be a physical device used to temporarily or permanently store programs (e.g., sequences of instructions) or data (e.g., program state information) for use by a computing device. Non-transient memory may be volatile and / or non-volatile addressable semiconductor memory. Examples of non-volatile memory include, but are not limited to, flash memory and read-only memory (ROM) / programmable read-only memory (PROM) / erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) / electronically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) (e.g., typically used for firmware such as boot programs). Examples of volatile memory include, but are not limited to, random access memory (RAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), phase change memory (PCM), and disk or tape.

[0045] 4 is a schematic diagram of an exemplary computing device 400 that may be used to implement the systems and methods described herein. The computing device 400 is intended to represent various forms of digital computers, such as laptops, desktops, workstations, personal digital assistants, servers, blade servers, mainframes, and other suitable computers. The components, their connections and relationships, and their functions depicted herein are intended to be illustrative only and are not intended to limit the implementation of the inventions described and / or claimed herein.

[0046] The computing device 400 includes a processor (i.e., data processing hardware) 410, a memory 420, a storage device 430, a high-speed interface / controller 440 that connects to the memory 420 and a high-speed expansion port 450, and a low-speed interface / controller 460 that connects to a low-speed bus 470 and the storage device 430. Each of the components 410, 420, 430, 440, 450, 460 are interconnected using various buses and may be implemented on a common motherboard or in other manners as desired. The processor 410 can process instructions for execution within the computing device 400, including instructions stored in the memory 420 or the storage device 430, to display graphical information for a graphic user interface (GUI) on an external input / output device, such as a display 480 coupled to the high-speed interface 440. In other implementations, multiple processors and / or multiple buses may be used as desired, along with multiple memories and types of memories. Also, multiple computing devices 400 may be connected, each providing a portion of the required operations (eg, as a bank of servers, a group of blade servers, or a multi-processor system).

[0047] The memory 420 stores information non-transiently within the computing device 400. The memory 420 may include the memory hardware 105 of the user device 102 or the memory hardware 114 of the remote system 111. The memory 420 may be a computer-readable medium, a volatile memory unit, or a non-volatile memory unit. The non-transient memory 420 may be a physical device used to temporarily or permanently store programs (e.g., sequences of instructions) or data (e.g., program state information) for use by the computing device 400. Examples of non-volatile memory include, but are not limited to, flash memory and read-only memory (ROM) / programmable read-only memory (PROM) / erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) / electronically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) (e.g., typically used for firmware such as boot programs). Examples of volatile memory include, but are not limited to, random access memory (RAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), phase change memory (PCM), and disks and tapes.

[0048] The storage device 430 can provide mass storage for the computing device 400. In some implementations, the storage device 430 is a computer-readable medium. In various different implementations, the storage device 430 can be a floppy disk device, a hard disk device, an optical disk device, or an array of devices including a tape device, a flash memory or other similar solid-state memory device, or a storage area network or other configuration of devices. In additional implementations, the computer program product is tangibly embodied in an information carrier. The computer program product includes instructions that, when executed, perform one or more methods as described above. The information carrier is a computer or machine-readable medium, such as the memory 420, the storage device 430, or a memory on the processor 410.

[0049] The high-speed controller 440 manages the bandwidth-intensive operations of the computing device 400, while the low-speed controller 460 manages the less bandwidth-intensive operations. Such duty allocation is merely an example. In some implementations, the high-speed controller 440 is coupled to the memory 420, to the display 480 (e.g., via a graphics processor or accelerator), and to a high-speed expansion port 450 that can accept various expansion cards (not shown). In some implementations, the low-speed controller 460 is coupled to the storage device 430 and to a low-speed expansion port 490. The low-speed expansion port 490, which may include various communication ports (e.g., USB, Bluetooth, Ethernet, wireless Ethernet), may be coupled to one or more input / output devices such as a keyboard, pointing device, scanner, or to a networking device such as a switch or router, e.g., via a network adapter.

[0050] The computing device 400 may be implemented in many different forms, as shown in the figure. For example, the computing device 400 may be implemented as a standard server 400a, or multiple such servers in a group 400a, as a laptop computer 400b, or as part of a rack server system 400c.

[0051] Various implementations of the systems and techniques described herein may be realized in digital electronic and / or optical circuitry, integrated circuitry, specially designed ASICs (application specific integrated circuits), computer hardware, firmware, software, and / or combinations thereof. These various implementations may include implementation in one or more computer programs executable and / or interpretable in a programmable system including at least one programmable processor, which may be special purpose or general purpose, coupled to receive and transmit data and instructions from and to a storage system, at least one input device, and at least one output device.

[0052] These computer programs (also known as programs, software, software applications, or code) contain machine instructions for a programmable processor and may be implemented in high-level procedural and / or object-oriented programming languages ​​and / or assembly / machine languages. As used herein, the terms "machine-readable medium" and "computer-readable medium" refer to any computer program product, non-transitory computer-readable medium, apparatus and / or device (e.g., magnetic disk, optical disk, memory, programmable logic device (PLD)) used to provide machine instructions and / or data to a programmable processor, including a machine-readable medium that receives the machine instructions as a machine-readable signal. The term "machine-readable signal" refers to any signal used to provide machine instructions and / or data to a programmable processor.

[0053] The processes and logic flows described herein can be executed by one or more programmable processors, also referred to as data processing hardware, which execute one or more computer programs that perform functions by operating on input data and generating output. The processes and logic flows can also be executed by application-specific logic circuitry, such as, for example, an FPGA (field programmable gate array) or an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit). Processors suitable for executing computer programs include, by way of example, both general-purpose and application-specific microprocessors, and any one or more processors of any kind of digital computer. In general, a processor receives instructions and data from a read-only memory, or a random access memory, or both. The essential elements of a computer are a processor for executing instructions, and one or more memory devices for storing instructions and data. In general, a computer also includes, or is operatively coupled to receive data from, or transfer data to, one or more mass storage devices for storing data, such as, for example, a magnetic disk, a magneto-optical disk, or an optical disk. However, a computer need not have such devices. Computer readable media suitable for storing computer program instructions and data include all forms of non-volatile memory, media, and memory devices, including, by way of example, semiconductor memory devices such as EPROM, EEPROM, and flash memory devices, magnetic disks such as internal hard disks or removable disks, magneto-optical disks, CD ROM disks, and DVD-ROM disks. The processor and memory can be supplemented by, or incorporated in, special purpose logic circuitry.

[0054] To provide for user interaction, one or more aspects of the present disclosure can be implemented in a computer having a display device, such as, for example, a CRT (cathode ray tube), LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor, or touch screen, for displaying information to a user, and optionally a keyboard and a pointing device, such as, for example, a mouse or trackball, which the user can use to provide input to the computer. Other types of devices can also be used to provide for user interaction, for example, feedback provided to the user can be any form of sensory feedback, such as, for example, visual feedback, auditory feedback, or tactile feedback, and input from the user can be received in any form, including acoustic, speech, or tactile input. In addition, the computer can interact with the user by sending and receiving documents to and from a device used by the user, for example, by sending a web page to a web browser in the user's client device in response to a request received from the web browser.

[0055] A number of implementations have been described. Nevertheless, it will be understood that various modifications can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosure. Accordingly, other implementations are within the scope of the following claims. [Explanation of symbols]

[0056] 10 users 100 Systems 102 User Devices 103 Data Processing Hardware 104 Network 105 Acoustic Feature Extractor 106 Microphones 107 Memory Hardware 110 Hotwords Detector 111 Remote System 112 Hot Word Classifier 113 Computing Resources 114 Memory Hardware 115 Storage Resources 118 Streaming Audio 119 utterances 120 Acoustic Features 121 First Acoustic Segment 122 Second Acoustic Segment 130 Confidence Score, Hotword Confidence Score, Hotword Score 200 attribute extractor 202 Hotword attributes, hotword input features 204 Hotword embedding 210 Hotwords Attributes 240 Heuristic Model 260 Neural Network Model 301 ASR System 310 End Pointer 320 ASR model 322 ASR results, voice recognition results 330 Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Module 400 computing devices 400a Standard Server 400b Laptop Computer 400c Rack Server System 410 Data Processing Hardware, Processors 420 Memory, Memory Hardware 430 Storage Devices 440 High-speed controller, high-speed interface 450 High Speed ​​Expansion Port 460 Low-speed controller, low-speed interface 470 Slow Bus 480 Display 490 Low Speed ​​Expansion Port

Claims

1. receiving, by the data processing hardware (410), a first acoustic segment (121) characterizing a hot word detected by the hot word detector (110) in streaming audio (118) captured by the user device (102); extracting, by said data processing hardware (410), one or more hot word attributes (210) from said first acoustic segment (121); adjusting, by the data processing hardware (410), one or more speech recognition parameters of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model (320) based on the one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121); After adjusting the speech recognition parameters of the ASR model (320), processing a second acoustic segment (122) using the ASR model (320) by the data processing hardware (410) to generate a speech recognition result (322), the second acoustic segment (122) characterizing a spoken query or command that follows the first acoustic segment (121) in the streaming audio (118) captured by the user device (102).

2. The one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) include: rest period measurements, Speech speed measurements, Pitch measurements, ASR prediction measurements, or Volume and Tone Measurements The method of claim 1 , comprising at least one of:

3. When the first audio segment (121) is received, receiving, by the data processing hardware (410), a confidence score (130) indicative of a confidence level regarding the likelihood that the streaming audio (118) captured by the user device (102) contains the hot word that the hot word detector (110) was trained to detect; 3. The method of claim 1, wherein extracting one or more hot word attributes from the first acoustic segment comprises extracting an ASR prediction measure indicative of the likelihood that the ASR model will correctly recognize the query or command portion in the second acoustic segment.

4. Adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model (320) includes: reducing the number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model (320) and / or reducing the beam search width of the ASR model (320) if the confidence score (130) is greater than a confidence score (130) threshold; or 4. The method of claim 3, further comprising: increasing a number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model and / or increasing the beam search width of the ASR model if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold.

5. Adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model (320) includes: if the confidence score (130) is greater than a confidence score (130) threshold, adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters to bias a recognition hypothesis toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment (121); or 4. The method of claim 3, further comprising adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters to bias a recognition hypothesis toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold.

6. Extracting one or more hot word attributes (210) from the first acoustic segment (121) includes extracting a pitch measure specifying a range of frequencies associated with the first acoustic segment (121); 6. The method (300) of claim 1, wherein adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters comprises adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters by focusing on the specified frequency range when processing the second acoustic segment (122) to generate the speech recognition result (322) and applying frequency-based filtering to the second acoustic segment (122).

7. 7. The method (300) of any one of claims 1 to 6, further comprising: influencing, by the data processing hardware (410), a natural language understanding (NLU) module (330) or biasing the ASR model (320) when performing query interpretation on the generated speech recognition results (322), if one hot word attribute of the one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) includes a tone and volume score specifying a tone and volume of voice when speaking the hot word.

8. 8. The method (300) of any one of claims 1 to 7, further comprising: if a hot word attribute of the one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) includes a pause duration measure indicative of the extent to which a speaker paused during utterance of the hot word and / or between utterance of the hot word and utterance of the query or command, instructing, by the data processing hardware (410), an end point pointer (310) to either increase or decrease a duration of an endpoint timeout period from a default value based on the pause duration measure.

9. 9. The method (300) of claim 1, further comprising: if a hot word attribute of the one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) includes a speech rate measurement indicative of a rate at which a speaker spoke the hot word in the streaming audio (118), instructing, by the data processing hardware (410), an end pointer (310) to either increase or decrease a duration of an endpoint timeout period from a default value based on the speech rate measurement.

10. 10. The method (300) of any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the one or more hot word attributes (210) are extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) using at least one of a neural network based model or a heuristic based model.

11. Data processing hardware (410); and memory hardware (420) in communication with the data processing hardware (410), the memory hardware (420), when executed by the data processing hardware (410), instructs the data processing hardware (410) to: receiving a first acoustic segment (121) in streaming audio (118) captured by a user device (102), the first acoustic segment characterizing a hot word detected by a hot word detector (110); extracting one or more hot word attributes (210) from the first acoustic segment (121); adjusting one or more speech recognition parameters of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model (320) based on the one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121); After adjusting the speech recognition parameters of the ASR model (320), processing a second acoustic segment (122) using the ASR model (320) to generate a speech recognition result (322), the second acoustic segment (122) characterizing a spoken query or command that follows the first acoustic segment (121) in the streaming audio (118) captured by the user device (102); A system (100) storing instructions for performing operations including:

12. The one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) include: rest period measurements, Speech speed measurements, Pitch measurements, ASR prediction measurements, or Volume and Tone Measurements The system (100) of claim 11, comprising at least one of:

13. The operation, upon receiving the first audio segment (121), comprises: receiving a confidence score (130) indicating a confidence level regarding the likelihood that the streaming audio (118) captured by the user device (102) contains the hot word that the hot word detector (110) was trained to detect; 13. The system (100) of claim 11 or 12, wherein extracting one or more hot word attributes (210) from the first acoustic segment (121) comprises extracting an ASR prediction measure indicative of the likelihood that the ASR model (320) will correctly recognize the query or command portion in the second acoustic segment (122).

14. Adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model (320) includes: reducing the number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model (320) and / or reducing the beam search width of the ASR model (320) if the confidence score (130) is greater than a confidence score (130) threshold; or 14. The system of claim 13, further comprising: increasing a number of speech recognition hypotheses output by the ASR model and / or increasing the beam search width of the ASR model if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold.

15. Adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters of the ASR model (320) includes: if the confidence score (130) is greater than a confidence score (130) threshold, adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters to bias a recognition hypothesis toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment (121); or 14. The system of claim 13, further comprising: if the confidence score is less than the confidence score threshold, adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters to not bias a recognition hypothesis toward recognizing the hot word in the first acoustic segment.

16. Extracting one or more hot word attributes (210) from the first acoustic segment (121) includes extracting a pitch measure specifying a range of frequencies associated with the first acoustic segment (121); 16. The system (100) of claim 11, wherein adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters comprises adjusting the one or more speech recognition parameters by focusing on the specified frequency range when processing the second acoustic segment (122) to generate the speech recognition result (322) and applying frequency-based filtering to the second acoustic segment (122).

17. 17. The system (100) of claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise: influencing a natural language understanding (NLU) module (330) or biasing the ASR model (320) when performing query interpretation on the generated speech recognition results (322) if one hot word attribute of the one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) includes a tone and volume score that specifies a tone and volume of voice when speaking the hot word.

18. 18. The system (100) of claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise: instructing an endpoint pointer (310) to either increase or decrease a duration of an endpoint timeout period from a default value based on a pause duration measure if a hot word attribute of the one or more hot word attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) includes a pause duration measure indicating an extent to which a speaker paused during utterance of the hot word and / or between utterance of the hot word and utterance of the query or command.

19. 19. The system (100) of claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise: if a hotword attribute of the one or more hotword attributes (210) extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) includes a speech rate measure indicative of a rate at which a speaker spoke the hotword in the streaming audio (118), instructing an end pointer (310) to either increase or decrease a duration of an endpoint timeout period from a default value based on the speech rate measure.

20. 20. The system (100) of any one of claims 11 to 19, wherein the one or more hot word attributes (210) are extracted from the first acoustic segment (121) using at least one of a neural network based model or a heuristic based model.

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