Patent ID: 7383181

Claim:
A speech recognition system, comprising: an audio microphone outputting a microphone signal based on a sensed audio input; a speech sensor outputting a sensor signal based on a non-audio input generated by speech action; a speech detector component outputting a speech detection signal indicative of a probability that a user is speaking based on the microphone signal and based on a level of variance in a first characteristic of the sensor signal and based on the microphone signal, wherein the first characteristic of the sensor signal has a first level of variance when the user is speaking and a second level of variance when the user is not speaking and wherein the speech detector component outputs the speech detection signal based on the level of variance of the first characteristic of the sensor signal relative to a baseline level of variance of the first characteristic that comprises a level of a predetermined one of the first and second levels of the characteristic over a give time period the speech detection component further calculating a combined signal by multiplying the speech detection signal by the microphone signal; and a speech recognizer recognizing speech to provide a recognition output indicative of speech in the microphone signal based on the combined signal, wherein recognizing speech comprises: increasing a likelihood that speech is recognized by an amount based on a probability that the speech detection signal indicates that the user is speaking; and decreasing a likelihood that speech is recognized by an amount based on a probability that the speech detection signal indicates that the speaker is not speaking.