Aware: Intuitive Device Activation Using Prosody for Natural Voice Interactions

Voice interactive devices often use keyword spotting for device activation. However, this approach suffers from misrecognition of keywords and can respond to keywords not intended for calling the device (e.g., ”You can ask Alexa about it.”), causing accidental device activations. We propose a method that leverages prosodic features to differentiate calling/not-calling voices (F1 score: 0.869), allowing devices to respond only when called upon to avoid misactivation. As a proof of concept, we built a prototype smart speaker called Aware that allows users to control the device activation by speaking the keyword in specific prosody patterns. These patterns are chosen to represent people’s natural calling/not-calling voices, which are uncovered in a study to collect such voices and investigate their prosodic difference. A user study comparing Aware with Amazon Echo shows Aware can activate more correctly (F1 score 0.93 vs. 0.56) and is easy to learn and use.