Patent ID: 7319961

Claim:
A hands-free system for assisting in capturing data and generating a report during examination of rock samples and/or thin sections, said system being designed to include a plurality of entries, where a first number of the entries form a matrix within the report, said system comprising: a speech input for receiving units of speech, each unit of speech being one of a command and text; a speech recognition system connected to said input for recognizing a content of each unit of speech and for encoding each unit of speech into a respective unit of data such that, based upon the recognized content of each unit of speech, that unit of speech is identified as a command having a respective unit of command data or as text having a respective unit of text data; a voice synthesizer for synthesizing audible speech signals, where said voice synthesizer, in response to a received one of the units of data, generates an audible speech signal representative of the recognized content of the respective unit of speech; a control for sending selected ones of the units of data to said voice synthesizer; a vocabulary manager for receiving each unit of text data for determining a respective entry to be included in the report in accordance with a defined first set of rules; and a navigation manager for receiving each unit of command data for determining a course of action in generating the report in accordance with the received unit of command data and a defined second set of rules, the second set of rules including a set of identifying rules for identifying a position in the matrix of an entry when that entry is one of the first plurality of entries, where a second plurality of the entries is defined as a subset of the first plurality of entries, the second plurality of entries being intended to have a predetermined mathematical relationship to each other, where the first set of rules includes a rule for determining whether or not a specific entry, when the specific entry is one of the second plurality of entries, is in accordance with the predetermined mathematical relationship, and where, when the specific entry is determined by the determining rule to be not in accordance with the predetermined mathematical relationship, said synthesizer generates a warning signal to indicate an error.