Patent Document ID: 7627475
Application ID: 11716240

Base Claim:
1. A method of detecting emotional states of telephone callers, the method comprising: providing speech signals from telephone callers; dividing the speech signals into at least one of segments, frames, and subframes; extracting acoustic features from the speech signals; calculating statistics from the acoustic features; classifying the speech with at least one neural network classifier as belonging to at least one emotional state; storing the speech signals and the emotional states in a storage medium, in a manner to allow later retrieval of the stored speech signals and emotional states; outputting in a human-recognizable format an indication of the at least one emotional state; wherein the speech is classified by a classifier taught to recognize at least one emotional state from a finite number of emotional states; wherein the speech is classified as emotional or non-emotional; and further comprising routing calls containing said speech signals to at least one predetermined location according to the at least one classified emotional state.

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Claim 4:
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the calls containing the speech signals are routed to at least one location selected from the group consisting of a voice-mail center, a call center, an e-mail destination, a customer service center, a manager, and emergency response personnel.