Patent ID: 7152033

Claim:
A method for multi-modal data fusion in a multi-modal system comprising a plurality of input modalities, the method comprising the steps of: (i) Receiving one or more segments of multi-modal data, each of said segments being associated respectively with said modalities; (ii) Initiating a dynamically variable wait period after one of said segments is received, said dynamically variable wait period having a duration determined from data fusion timing statistics of the system, wherein the duration of the dynamically variable wait period is determined from analysis of the following: min (max(AvgDur m ) or (AvgTimeDiff+AvgDur)) where AvgDur m is a value indicative of the average duration associated with processing a user request into a one of said segments for a modality m, AvgTimeDiff is a value indicative of an average period for periods starting after completion of receiving one of said segments and ending after completion of receiving a further one of said segments, and AvgDur is a value indicative of the average duration associated with processing a user request into a one of said segments for every modality in the system; (iii) Waiting for reception of any further said segments during said dynamically variable wait period; and (iv) Fusing said segments received during said steps (i) to (iii) to provide fused data.