Personal Assistant Coordination for Cross-Platform Voice Routing
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Solution Overview
Problem
The proliferation of connected devices and personal assistants creates challenges for users and manufacturers, including device incompatibility, the need to remember which devices are compatible with specific assistants, and the difficulty of accessing all personal assistants across different hardware platforms, leading to a fractured personal assistant environment.
Innovation Solution
A platform that analyzes user requests based on contextual state, behavior profile, and semantic content to route inputs to the most suitable personal assistant, allowing seamless interaction with both native and third-party voice assistants, thereby eliminating the need for users to remember which assistant is best suited for a task and enabling OEMs to control equipment-specific assistants without burdening users with multiple interfaces.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple personal assistants are used to support different smart devices, then device compatibility is improved, but user complexity increases as users must remember which devices are compatible with which personal assistant
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a gateway device as an intermediary layer between users and multiple personal assistants. This gateway automatically routes user requests to the appropriate personal assistant based on device compatibility, eliminating the need for users to manually track which assistant controls which device. The gateway analyzes the request, determines compatibility, and forwards to the suitable assistant transparently.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service by allowing personal assistants to automatically declare their capabilities and compatibility with smart devices. The gateway collects this information and uses it to make routing decisions without user intervention. The system self-organizes the mapping between devices and assistants, reducing user cognitive burden.
2Ease of operation
If personal assistants are distributed across different hardware platforms, then accessibility is improved, but system integration complexity increases making it difficult to access all assistants
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway device serves multiple functions: it acts as a universal interface for accessing different personal assistants, manages compatibility information, routes requests appropriately, and provides a unified user experience. This single multi-functional device replaces the need for users to directly interact with multiple distributed assistants across different platforms.
Solution Approach 2:
The gateway mediates between the user and the distributed personal assistants on different hardware platforms. It abstracts the complexity of system integration from the user, providing a simple interface while handling the complex routing and compatibility management in the background.
3Adaptability or versatility
If OEMs develop custom personal assistants for their equipment, then equipment-specific functionality is improved, but the personal assistant environment becomes fractured requiring users to manage multiple interfaces
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway acts as a mediator that allows OEM-specific personal assistants to maintain their equipment-specific functionality while being accessible through a unified interface. The gateway routes requests to the appropriate OEM assistant based on the target device, allowing users to interact with all assistants through a single gateway interface rather than managing multiple separate interfaces.
Solution Approach 2:
The system merges access to multiple OEM-specific personal assistants through a single gateway interface. While the assistants remain separate and specialized for their respective equipment, the gateway combines them into a unified access point, allowing users to manage all assistants through one interface rather than multiple separate ones.
Data Source
AI summary
A method includes receiving a representation of a spoken utterance, processing the representation of the spoken utterance to identify, from a number of candidate domains, a request and a serving domain, and routing the request to a personal assistant based on the request and the serving domain. Identification of the serving domain is based on one or more of a contextual state, a behavior profile of a speaker of the utterance, and a semantic content of the utterance.