Patent ID: 7401337

Claim:
A method for managing distributed multimodal interactions comprising the steps of: registering a plurality of distributed modality components with a modality component server, wherein each modality component handles an interface modality for an application, wherein each modality component places a set of activation conditions in a shared memory area of the modality component server, wherein the set of activation conditions defines how the modality component is activated, and how input and output between the modality component and a client device is started and stopped, wherein the modality component is activated whenever one of the set of activation conditions is detected, and wherein activation conditions are added or removed by an application module; initiating a multimodal application from a client device, the multimodal application submitting activation conditions for modality components it supports to a multimodal engine of the modality component server; matching the activation conditions submitted by the multimodal application with activation conditions stored in the shared memory area by an inference engine of the modality component server; activating a modality component by a modality activator of the modality component server when one of the set of activation conditions for said modality component is satisfied; connecting said activated modality component to said client device; conveying a user interaction from the client device to the activated modality component for processing; and disconnecting the activated modality component from the client device and deactivating the modality component by the modality activator upon completion of an interaction response.