US Patent 10134425 Direction-based speech endpointing

A system for determining an endpoint of an utterance during automatic speech recognition (ASR) processing that accounts for the direction and duration of the incoming speech. Beamformers of the ASR system may identify a source direction of the audio. The system may track the duration speech has been received from that source direction so that if speech is detected in another direction, the original source speech may be weighted differently for purposes of determining an endpoint of the utterance. Speech from a new direction may be discarded or treated like non-speech for purposes of determining an endpoint of speech from an original direction.