Video conferencing in a controlled environment facility entails significant security concerns. These concerns are even more prevalent in a system that permits residents of such facilities to communicate via their own personal devices. Therefore, in order to alleviate these concerns and provide a secure system in which a resident is able to make video calls using their personal device, a kiosk unit is provided to which the personal device must be linked for completing a video call. When making the video call, the camera and display on the personal device are disabled, and all video data is captured and displayed by the kiosk unit. The link between the kiosk unit and the personal device facilitates the exchange of the image information for transmission to the outside party, or display to the user. By providing a fixed camera, and disabling the personal device camera, security can be maintained while permitting video calling services.

The present disclosure relates to a method for controlling a real-time communication between at least two participants on a real-time conversation and collaboration platform by means of a digital assistant unit, wherein clients are connected to a conferencing application via a communications network establishing the communication, the method comprising the steps of identifying, from the at least two participants, a first participant as an active speaker in the conversation by using audio signals received from the first participant via a microphone, activating the digital assistant unit for the first participant, if a predetermined event is detected, wherein the audio signals received from the first participant are analyzed so as to identify voice commands therefrom, wherein an Automatic Speech Recognition engine performs a voice recognition procedure for identifying and transcribing the identified voice commands, and wherein the transcribed voice commands are analyzed and executed.

A method for determining potentially undesirable voices, in embodiments, includes: receiving audio recordings comprising voices associated with undesirable activity, and determining audio components of each of the audio recordings. The method may further comprise generating a multi-dimensional vector of the audio components for each of the plurality of audio recordings, and comparing audio components between the multi-dimensional vectors to determine clusters of multi-dimensional vectors, each cluster comprising two or more of the multi-dimensional vectors of audio components, wherein each cluster corresponds to a blacklisted voice. The method may further comprise receiving an audio recording or audio stream, and determining whether the audio recording or audio stream is associated with a voice associated with undesirable activity based on a comparison to the clusters.

Methods and systems described in this disclosure allow customers to quickly be authenticated. In some embodiments, a device and a user verifier are associated with a user profile. When a call is received from the device, the user may be requested to input the user verifier. After verifying that the device is unique to the user and that the user verifier matches the user verifier associated with the user profile, the user may be authenticated to the call or activity.

A method of controlling free phone calls places from within a secured premises through an institutional phone system generally includes assigning a unique access identifier to an individual caller upon entry into the secured premises; receiving a destination number front the individual caller within the secured premises, the destination number being associated with a telephone located outside the secured premises; determining if the destination number is a per se free number, and, if the destination number is not determined to be a per se free number: receiving the unique access identifier from the individual caller; validating the unique access identifier; and, if the unique access identifier is valid, processing a telephone call to the destination number.

A system for multilingual authentication access to a communication system in a controlled environment is disclosed. The system includes a communication subsystem that connects a communication between a first communication device and a second communication device, wherein the first communication device is used by the inmate of the correctional facility. The system also includes a profile subsystem configured to store profile information of the inmate associated with the first communication device. The system further includes an authentication subsystem that provides a challenge question to the first communication device based on the profile information and an accommodation of the inmate that affects authentication, receives a response to challenge question and a voice sample from the first communication device, verifies the response and the voice sample, and authorizes connection of the communication between the first communication device and the second communication device based on verification of the response and the voice sample.

Disclosed is a secure telephone call management system for authenticating users of a telephone system in an institutional facility. Authentication of the users is accomplished by using a personal identification number, preferably in conjunction with speaker independent voice recognition and speaker dependent voice identification. When a user first enters the system, the user speaks his or her name which is used as a sample voice print. During each subsequent use of the system, the user is required to speak his or her name. Voice identification software is used to verify that the provided speech matches the sample voice print. The secure system includes accounting software to limit access based on funds in a user's account or other related limitations. Management software implements widespread or local changes to the system and can modify or set any number of user account parameters.

A method of coating metallic powder particles includes disposing an amount of metallic powder particles in a fluidizing reactor and removing moisture adhered to the powder particles within the reactor with a working gas at an elevated temperature for a predetermined time. The method further includes coating the powder particles in the reactor with silicon present within the precursor gas at an elevated temperature for a predetermined time and purging the precursor gas from the reactor using the working gas.

A method of accessing a dial-up service is disclosed. An example method of providing access to a service includes receiving a first speech signal from a user to form a first utterance; recognizing the first utterance using speaker independent speaker recognition; requesting the user to enter a personal identification number; and when the personal identification number is valid, receiving a second speech signal to form a second utterance and providing access to the service.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for a dynamic threshold for speaker verification are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes the actions of receiving, for each of multiple utterances of a hotword, a data set including at least a speaker verification confidence score, and environmental context data. The actions further include selecting from among the data sets, a subset of the data sets that are associated with a particular environmental context. The actions further include selecting a particular data set from among the subset of data sets based on one or more selection criteria. The actions further include selecting, as a speaker verification threshold for the particular environmental context, the speaker verification confidence score. The actions further include providing the speaker verification threshold for use in performing speaker verification of utterances that are associated with the particular environmental context.