Patent ID: 9477217
Filing Date: 2016-10-25
CPC Classification: G05B,G06F,G10L,H03G

Claim Text:
1. A method of operating an appliance, the method comprising: identifying, by the appliance, one or more visual cues included in image captured by a camera of the appliance, wherein the one or more visual cues indicate that a human user of the appliance is seeking to provide a voice command to the appliance; determining, by the appliance, whether the human user of the appliance is seeking to provide the voice command to the appliance based at least in part on the one or more visual cues identified from the imagery, wherein the determining whether the human user of the appliance is seeking to provide the voice command to the appliance based at least in part on the one or more visual cues includes comparing, by the appliance, a number of identified visual cues to a threshold number; upon determining that the human user seeking to providing the voice command to the appliance, communicating, by the appliance, with one or more devices over a network to reduce background noise a generated by the one or more devices, wherein the communicating includes querying the one or more devices to identify which of the devices are operating and generating the background noise and wherein the one or more devices are different than and physically separate from the appliance; receiving, by the appliance, the voice command from the user; determining, by the appliance, that the user has finished providing the voice command; and upon determining that the user has finished providing tile voice command, communicating, by the appliance, with the one or more devices over the network to cause the one or more visual devices to resume standard operations.