Google patents assistant that hears you from the direction you're facing
This filing describes a system where a digital assistant uses sensor data to figure out which object you are looking at when you ask a vague question. It then plays the spoken answer using spatial audio, making the voice sound like it is coming from the direction of that specific object.
In the filing’s own words
Methods, systems, apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for spatialized audio feedback from automated assistants. In one aspect, the method includes actions of determining that a user input has been received at a client device, identifying, based on sensor data, one or more points of interest of an environment in which the client device is located and an orientation of a user of the client device relative to the one or more points of interest, identifying, based on processing the user input and the sensor data, a natural language response providing information relevant corresponds to a particular point of interest, determining, based on the orientation of the user of the client device relative to the particular point of interest, one or more spatial audio parameters to be used to provision the natural language response to the user, and causing the natural language response to be audibly rendered at the client device using one or more of the spatial audio parameters.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1. A computer-implemented method, the method comprising: determining that a user input has been received at a client device, wherein the user input comprises an ambiguous reference to an object in an environment; identifying, based on sensor data available to the client device: one or more points of interest of the environment; and an orientation of a user of the client device relative to the one or more points of interest; resolving the ambiguous reference to a particular point of interest, of the one or more points of interest, based on the orientation of the user; generating, based on the resolving of the ambiguous reference to the particular point of interest, a natural language response that provides information relevant to the particular point of interest; determining, based on the orientation of the user relative to the particular point of interest, one or more spatial audio parameters; and causing the natural language response to be audibly rendered at the client device using the one or more spatial audio parameters.
Facts
- Company
- Google (GOOGLE LLC)
- Official title
- LOCATION-AWARE ASSISTANT
- Publication number
- US20260304067A1
- Application number
- 19690881
- Filed
- May 28, 2026
- Published
- Oct 1, 2026
- Inventors
- 1
- Claims
- 20
Classified under
H04W 4/021 Electricity & electronicsG06F 40/40 Physics & computingMore from Google in AI & software
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.