Patent ID: 11955126
Assignee: MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC AUTOMOTIVE AMERICA, INC.
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 14:
15. A method for processing requests from users of an infotainment system, comprising:
receiving a request from a user of the infotainment system, wherein receiving the request comprises receiving the request from the user as speech and receiving the request further comprises receiving a plurality of requests from a plurality of users of the infotainment system as a multi-user speech signal;
separating the multi-user speech signal into a plurality of individual speech signals for each of the plurality of users;
determining a domain for the received request based on information contained in the received request, the domain specifying one or more categories for the request, wherein determining the domain for the received request comprises determining the domain for the received request based on information contained in the speech;
routing the received request to a virtual assistant assigned to handle requests for the determined domain, wherein the virtual assistant is one of a plurality of virtual assistants respectively assigned to handle requests for a plurality of respectively assigned domains;
transmitting a response to the request to the user wherein transmitting the response to the request to the user comprises iteratively transmitting a plurality of responses to each of the plurality of requests, wherein iteratively transmitting the plurality of responses comprises:
for each of the plurality of individual speech signals, determining a time of arrival (TOA) for each of the individual speech signals;
ordering the requests according to a rank order of the determined TOA for the individual speech signal of the requests;
determining a priority for the requests according to a user priority scheme for processing the requests; and
transmitting the plurality of responses according to the priority for the requests and the rank order of the individual speech signals.