Brown University

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island

Harvey F Silverman

Michael S Brandstein

John E Adcock

William Robert Patterson

Kenneth J Silverman

Stephen J Sheinkopf

Barry M Lester

An automated infant cry analyzer with high accuracy to detect important acoustic features of cry is provided. The system's accuracy was rigorously tested and was compared to ground truth manual coding. The resulting methods and systems are applied to infant developmental disorders.

Accurate analysis tool and method for the quantitative acoustic assessment of infant cry

Magnetic tracking systems and methods for determining the position and orientation of a remote object. A magnetic tracking system includes a stationary transmitter for establishing a reference coordinate system, and at least one receiver. The remote object is attached to, mounted on, or otherwise coupled to the receiver. The transmitter can include a set of three mutually perpendicular coils having a common center point, or a set of three coplanar coils with separate centers. The receiver can include a set of three orthogonal coils. The position and orientation of the receiver and the remote object coupled thereto is determined by measuring the nine mutual inductances between the three transmitter coils and the three receiver coils. The magnetic tracking system provides reduced power consumption, increased efficiency, digital compensation for component variation, automatic self-calibration, automatic synchronization with no connections between transmitter and receiver, and rapid low-cost implementation.

Electromagnetic position and orientation sensing system

Apparatus for determining the location of a signal-generating source (e.g., a conferee in a telephone conference) includes at least three sensors (e.g., microphones) arranged in a plurality of sets, each having two or more sensors. A surface-finding element responds to receipt at each sensor set of signals (e.g., speech) from the source for identifying a geometric surface (e.g., the surface of a hyperboloid or cone) representing potential locations of the source as a function of sensor locations and time difference of arrival of the signals. A location-approximating element coupled to two or more of the sets identifies a line that further defines potential source locations at the intersection of the surfaces. A location signal representing those potential locations is generated in accord with parameters of that line. Further functionality generates generating the location signal as a function of closest intersections the plural ones of the aforementioned lines.

Methods and apparatus for source location estimation from microphone-array time-delay estimates

Methods and apparatus for source location estimation from

Methods and systems for beamforming are disclosed that include a signal processor that can dynamically determine the relative time delays between a plurality of frequency-dependent signals. The signal processor can adaptively generate a beam signal by aligning the plural frequency-dependent signals according to the relative time delays between the signals. The signal processor can store one frequency-dependent signal as a reference signal and can align the remaining frequency-dependent signals relative to this reference signal. One advantage of the signal processor is that it can align the plural frequency-dependent signals generated by an array of microphones that can be arranged in a linear, two dimensional or three dimensional array and located in a room environment.

Growing community of inventors

East Greenwich, RI, United States of America

Harvey F Silverman