Patent ID: 8600760

Claim:
A speech recognition method comprising the steps of: (a) receiving input speech containing vocabulary via a microphone associated with an automatic speech recognition system; (b) processing the input speech with a grammar to obtain N-best hypotheses and associated parameter values using at least one processor associated with the automatic speech recognition system; (c) cross-referencing a first-best hypothesis of the N-best hypotheses against a list of known confusable vocabulary to determine whether the first-best hypothesis of the N-best hypotheses is confusable with any of the known confusable vocabulary; (d) accepting the first-best hypothesis as recognized speech corresponding to the received input speech, if the first-best hypothesis is not determined to be confusable with any of the known confusable vocabulary; (e) comparing at least one parameter value of the first-best hypothesis to at least one threshold value, if the first-best hypothesis is determined to be confusable with any of the known confusable vocabulary; (f) accepting the first-best hypothesis as recognized speech corresponding to the received input speech, if the at least one parameter value of the first- best hypothesis is greater than the at least one threshold value; (g) determining if a second-best hypothesis of the N-best hypotheses is confusable with the first-best hypothesis, if the at least one parameter value of the first-best hypothesis is not greater than the at least one threshold value; and (h) accepting the second-best hypothesis as recognized speech corresponding to the received input speech, if the second-best hypothesis is determined to be confusable with the first-best hypothesis; (h1) determining if a confidence score of the second-best hypothesis is between lower and upper threshold values; and (i) accepting the second-best hypothesis as recognized speech corresponding to the received input speech, if the confidence score is determined to be within the lower and upper threshold values.