Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Limited

Calum Armstrong

Danjeli Schembri

Philip Cockram

Michael Lee Jones

Marina Villanueva Barreiro

Alexei Smith

Mark Jacobus Breugelmans

Fabio Cappello

Michael Eder

Nicholas Anthony Edward Ryan

Maurizio Cerrato

Hogarth Andall

Marina Villanueva-Barreiro

Christopher Buchanan

William Michael James Hollingsworth

Mark Anthony

Paul Welton

Alexei Ashton Derek Smith

An audio personalisation method for a first user includes: testing a first user on a calibration test, the calibration test comprising requiring a user to match a test sound to a test location, either by controlling the position of the presented sound or controlling the position of the presented location, for a sequence of test matches, each test sound being presented at a position using a default head related transfer function 'HRTF', receiving an estimate of each matching location from the first user, and calculating a respective error for each estimate, to generate a sequence of location estimate errors for the first user; and comparing at least some of the location estimate errors for the first user with estimate errors of the same locations previously generated for at least a subset of a corpus of reference individuals; identifying a reference individual with the closest match of compared location estimation errors to those of the first user; and using an HRTF, previously obtained for the identified reference individual, for the first user.

Audio personalisation method and system

The invention provides techniques for intelligently positioning speech in a virtual environment. Factors such as user preferences, the location of virtual environment audio and/or visual events, avatar location, and others can be taken into account when selecting a suitable location for the speech. The virtual environment can be a game environment, a meeting environment, an augmented reality environment, a virtual reality environment, and the like. The invention can be implemented by an audio processing unit which may be part of a game console.

3D spatialisation of voice chat

A system includes a head-mountable display (HMD) configured to receive one or more signals via a wired connection with an external device, processing circuitry to generate an output indicative of at least one of a predicted disconnect event and a detected disconnect event for the wired connection, and control circuitry to instruct one or more operations to be performed by the HMD in response to the generated output.

Head-mountable display system and methods

A system for generating interactive content for a user includes an environment identification unit operable to identify a virtual environment for interaction by a user, an element arrangement unit operable to generate an arrangement of a plurality of elements within the environment in dependence upon one or more parameters, a content modification unit operable to modify the virtual environment so as to include the plurality of elements in the generated arrangement, and a content rendering unit operable to render one or more images of the modified virtual environment.

Content generation system and method

A system includes one or more sensors to detect one or more properties for a current user wearing a head-mountable display (HMD), control circuitry to select a user profile from a plurality of stored user profiles in dependence upon one or more of the detected properties, where each stored user profile is associated with a respective user and includes data indicative of one or more reference properties for the respective user, where the selected user profile includes data indicative of at least one reference property that is substantially the same as at least one of the one or more of the detected properties, and processing circuitry to generate at least one of audio and video content for output by the HMD in dependence upon the selected user profile and in response to the selection of the user profile.

Head-mountable display systems and methods

A content generation system operable to generate one or more actions to be performed by an agent, the system comprising an input receiving unit operable to receive two or more actions for the agent, a model generation unit operable to input the actions to a machine learning model so as to generate a trained machine learning model, and an action generation unit operable to generate an action to be performed by the agent, wherein the generation comprises the selection of a latent space interpolation state associated with the trained machine learning model.

A method for obtaining a position of a peripheral device for an audiovisual entertainment system, the method comprising: controlling an audio source to output an audio signal at a first time; determining a second time at which the audio signal arrives at an audio detector, wherein the peripheral device comprises at least one of the audio source and audio detector; and estimating a position of the peripheral device based on an acoustic time-of-flight between the first time and the second time.

Method for obtaining a position of a peripheral device

A system comprising a feedback device comprising one or more elements operable to generate an output in response to an input from a processing device, a microphone operable to capture one or more audio inputs, an input detection unit operable to detect one or more inputs to the feedback device from the processing device, and a response generation unit operable to generate a response to the detected input in dependence upon the input and at least a distance between an element associated with the corresponding output and the microphone.

Audio cancellation system and method

A system for determining the impulse response of an environment, the system comprising an audio emitting unit operable to emit a predetermined sound in the environment, an audio detection unit operable to record the sound output by the audio emitting unit, and an impulse response generation unit operable to identify an impulse response of the environment in dependence upon a frequency response of the audio emitting unit and/or the audio detection unit, and a difference between the predetermined sound and the recorded sound.

Impulse response generation system and method

A user input method includes the steps of inputting real events arising from a user acting as a spectator of content, analysing the real events to estimate user sentiment, and modifying an aspect of computer-controlled character behaviour in response to estimated user sentiment.

User input method and apparatus

A head-related transfer function, HRTF, dataset modification system, the system including an HRTF identifying unit operable to identify a first HRTF from an HRTF dataset, a filter generating unit operable to generate a filter in dependence upon the first HRTF, and an HRTF modification unit operable to modify the first HRTF by applying the generated filter to generate an output HRTF, where the generating comprises the steps of: identifying a spectral response of the first HRTF, identifying a plurality of second HRTFs within the HRTF dataset, each within a predetermined distance of the first HRTF, and a spectral response associated with each of the second HRTFs, generating an average of each of the identified spectral responses of the first and second HRTFs, and generating a filter using the inverse of this average.

Transfer function modification system and method

An audio personalisation method for a user includes: testing the user with an audio test, the audio test comprising: moving a portable device, comprising a position tracking mechanism and a speaker, to a plurality of predetermined test positions relative to the user's head; when within a threshold distance of a predetermined test position, playing a test sound through the speaker of the portable device; and detecting the test sound using a microphone proximate to each of the user's ears, and associating resulting measurement data with the predetermined test position, where the resulting measurement data derived from the detected test sounds is characteristic of the user's head morphology; for a corpus of reference individuals for whom respective HRTFs have been generated, comparing the measurement data from the user's audio test or a head-related transfer function 'HRTF' derived from this measurement data with corresponding measurement data of some or all respective reference individuals in the corpus or HRTFs of some or all respective reference individuals in the corpus; identifying a reference individual whose measurement data or HRTF best matches the measurement data or HRTF from the user's audio test; and using the HRTF of the identified reference individual for the user.

An audio personalisation method for a user, to reproduce an area-based or volumetric sound source, includes the steps of, for a head related transfer function 'HRTF' associated with the user, smoothing HRTF coefficients relating to peaks and notches in the HRTF's spectral response, responsive to the size of the area or volume of the sound source; filtering the sound source using the smoothed HRTF for the notional position of the sound source; and outputting the filtered sound source signal for playback to the user.

A head mountable display, HMD, system to display images to a user via an HMD includes an illumination detector to detect an illumination level of an ambient environment around the HMD; an operation detector to detect one or more operations indicative of one or both of: (i) initiation of the HMD being put on by the user; and (ii) initiation of the HMD being taken off by the user; and a controller to control the illumination level of the display images, the controller being configured to generate and apply a temporary illumination level variation to the display images in response to a detection of the one or more operations by the operation detector.

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London, United Kingdom

Calum Armstrong