US Patent 11250844 Managing agent engagement in a man-machine dialog

Agents engage and disengage with users intelligently. Users can tell agents to remain engaged without requiring a wakeword. Engaged states can support modal dialogs and barge-in. Users can cause disengagement explicitly. Disengagement can be conditional based on timeout, change of user, or environmental conditions. Engagement can be one-time or recurrent. Recurrent states can be attentive or locked. Locked states can be unconditional or conditional, including being reserved to support user continuity. User continuity can be tested by matching parameters or tracking user by many modalities including microphone arrays, cameras, and other sensors.