Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Corporation

Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America

Panasonic Holdings Corporation

Hiroki Furukawa

Takeo Kanamori

Tsuyoki Nishikawa

Atsushi Sakaguchi

Satoru Ibaraki

Shinichi Yuzuriha

Tomohiro Kimura

Sadashi Kageyama

Kenichiro Hayashi

Junichi Tagawa

Kazuya Nomura

Akira Kisoda

Yuji Nakai

Kohhei Hayashida

Shuichi Ninomiya

Michio Matsumoto

Kiminori Ono

Hiroyuki Naono

Kaoru Iwakuni

Ryoichi Sugimura

Hirofumi Sone

Ryohei Imai

A sound pickup device includes a plurality of microphone elements, a sensitivity correcting unit that corrects a difference in sensitivity among the microphone elements by multiplying an output signal of each of the microphone elements by a gain. The sound pickup device also includes a target sound detecting unit that detects a voice of a speaker as a target sound, a sensitivity correction control unit that controls the gain based on a result of detecting the target sound, and a directivity synthesizing unit that picks up the target sound in a boosted manner using the output signals from the microphone elements of which difference in sensitivity is corrected. The sensitivity correction control unit updates the gain based on the output signals from the microphone elements if the voice of the speaker is detected and does not update the gain if the voice of the speaker is not detected.

Sound pickup device, sound pickup method, and non-transitory computer readable recording medium storing sound pickup program

A speech translation device, for conversation between a first speaker making an utterance in a first language and a second speaker making an utterance in a second language different from the first language, includes: a speech detector that detects, from sounds that are input, a speech segment in which the first speaker or the second speaker made an utterance; a display that, after speech recognition is performed on the utterance, displays a translation result obtained by translating the utterance from the first language to the second language or from the second language to the first language; and an utterance instructor that outputs, in the second language via the display, a message prompting the second speaker to make an utterance after a first speaker's utterance or outputs, in the first language via the display, a message prompting the first speaker to make an utterance after a second speaker's utterance.

Speech translation device, speech translation method, and recording medium

A speech recognition device includes: an obtaining unit which obtains a speech uttered in a conversation between a first speaker and a second speaker; a storage which stores the speech obtained; an input unit which receives operation input; an utterance start detector which, when the input unit receives the operation input, detects a start position of the speech; and a speaker identification unit which identifies a speaker of the speech as the first speaker who has performed the operation input or the second speaker who has not performed the operation input, based on (i) first timing at which the input unit has received the operation input and (ii) second timing indicating the detected start position of the speech. The first and second timing are set for each speech of the first and second speakers. A speech recognizer performs speech recognition on the speech whose speaker has been identified.

Speech recognition device, speech recognition method, and recording medium

A speech input method that includes: detecting whether a user's face is in proximity to a speech input device including at least one microphone; and performing correction processing on an audio signal obtained through sound collection by the at least one microphone when it is detected that the user's face is in proximity to the speech input device.

Speech input method, recording medium, and speech input device

A speech translation device includes: a beamformer which forms, from a speech signal obtained by a microphone array, a first beam and a second beam having different directions; a direction designator which designates one of the first beam and the second beam according to a user operation; a signal-to-noise (SN) ratio calculator which calculates an SN ratio using the designated beam as a signal component in the SN ratio, and the other beam not designated as a noise component; a display determiner which determines whether recognition of the designated beam is difficult, using the calculated SN ratio, and determines a speaking instruction for overcoming difficulty of the recognition when determining that the recognition is difficult; and a display which displays the speaking instruction determined by the display determiner in a display area.

Speech translation device, speech translation method, and recording medium therefor

A speech translation apparatus includes: an estimator which estimates a sound source direction, based on an acoustic signal obtained by a microphone array unit; a controller which identifies that an utterer is a user or a conversation partner, based on the sound source direction estimated after the start of translation is instructed by a button, using a positional relationship indicated by a layout information item stored in storage and selected in advance, and determines a translation direction indicating input and output languages in and into which content of the acoustic signal is recognized and translated, respectively; and a translator which obtains, according to the translation direction, original text indicating the content in the input language and translated text indicating the content in the output language. The controller displays the original and translated texts on first and second display areas corresponding to the positions of the user and conversation partner, respectively.

Speech translation apparatus, speech translation method, and recording medium storing the speech translation method

An apparatus includes a first microphone disposed near a first seat in a car cabin, the first seat configured to seat a first occupant, a second microphone disposed near a second seat in the car cabin, the second seat configured to seat a second occupant, a processor, and a memory storing a computer program. The computer program, when executed, causes the processor to execute operations including: estimating a first mixed speech using a second signal acquired by the second microphone, the first mixed speech including a first speech that has been uttered by the second occupant and has entered the first microphone, and removing the first mixed speech from a first signal acquired by the first microphone.

Speech collector in car cabin

A right expected value generator generates an expected value of a right channel spectrum from the right channel spectrum. Further, a left expected value generator generates an expected value of a left channel spectrum from the left channel spectrum. Further, a right channel spectrum corrector so corrects a right channel spectrum outputted from a second synthesizer that the right channel spectrum does not exceed the expected value of the right channel spectrum. Moreover, a left channel spectrum corrector so corrects a left channel spectrum outputted from the second synthesizer that the left channel spectrum does not exceed the expected value of the left channel spectrum.

Stereo reproduction apparatus

An echo cancellation apparatus cancels an echo signal included in a second speech signal including the echo signal of a first speech signal, and includes: a first echo replica generating unit generating a first echo replica by processing the first speech signal through a filter whose characteristic is equalized with a acoustic transfer function of amplified sound; a first echo cancelling unit generating and providing a first echo-cancelled signal by subtracting from the second speech signal the first echo replica generated by the first echo replica generating unit; and a filter updating unit generating a nonlinear-converted echo-cancelled signal by performing nonlinear conversion on the first echo-cancelled signal generated by the first echo cancelling unit, and updating the filter characteristic thereby equalizing the filter characteristic with the acoustic transfer function, using the nonlinear-converted echo-cancelled signal, the first speech signal, and a norm of the first speech signal.

Echo cancellation apparatus, echo cancellation method and communications apparatus

A transmission method of a digital broadcast, which is compatible with a DVB-T terrestrial digital broadcast system in Europe, saves a battery in a mobile terminal. Superframes in DVB-T are divided into units each including plural symbols so that an integer number of TS packets can be carried in each slot. At least one slot is used to transmit one service. Energy dispersion, Reed-Solomon coding, byte interleaving, convolutional coding, and time interleaving are applied to each service. When services for mobile terminal reception and services for fixed terminals are transmitted as the provided services, null packets may be transmitted before and after the slot carrying the mobile receiver service so that the fixed reception service and the mobile reception services are not mixed.

OFDM signal transmission method, transmission apparatus, and reception apparatus

In a null symbol detection device, at the time of receiving a terrestrial digital broadcast, a null symbol can be stably detected even under a fading environment. A synchronous addition buffer group is provided subsequent to an amplitude detector so as to synchronously add an OFDM signal at a null symbol repetition period. A moving average processing unit performs a moving average operation upon synchronous addition data with the number of samples corresponding to a null symbol to output a moving average value. A transmission mode determining unit detects the minimum value among the moving average values normalized in a correction processing unit and compares levels of the minimum values to determine a reception mode. A null position detector generates a synchronous pulse at a null position.

Null symbol detection device

Digital broadcasting for transmitting program data including at least one of digital audio data and digital video data with other information is carried out by using terrestrial waves. The program data, download data corresponding to contents of the program data, and reference information correlating the download data with the program data are multiplexing with each other. The multiplexing signals are transmitted over a specific frequency band.

Transmission method of digital broadcasting, digital broadcasting receiver, and digital broadcasting station system

A digital audio broadcasting receiver includes: an analog-digital converter for converting a plurality of transfer frames from an analog signal format into a digital signal format based on a clock signal having a fixed frequency and for outputting the first transfer frame; a demodulator for demodulating the first transfer frame from a first frame processing start position for the first transfer frame; an audio decoder for generating audio data containing a plurality of audio samples based on the data symbol contained in the first transfer frame which has been demodulated by the demodulator; a transfer path characteristics calculator for generating a transfer path characteristics signal representing transfer path characteristics based on the reference symbol contained in the first transfer frame which has been demodulated by the demodulator; and a frame processing start position control section for controlling a second frame processing start position for the second transfer frame, by outputting to the demodulator a position control signal representing a difference between a predetermined frame processing reference start position and the first frame processing start position for the first transfer frame based on the transfer path characteristics signal, so that the second frame processing start position for the second transfer frame coincides with the predetermined frame processing reference start position.

Digital audio broadcasting receiver

A stereo ultradirectional microphone apparatus for detecting a sound to produce stereo sound signals, comprises: first and second ultradirectional microphones arranged side by side with a given distance in parallel for converting a sound into first and second sound signals respectively, first and second delays for delaying an output of the first and second microphones by a delay time .tau. respectively, and first and second subtractors for subtracting for subtraction between the first sound signal and an output of the second delay and subtracting for subtraction between the second sound signal and an output of the first delay. The delay time .tau. corresponds to a difference between the timings of a sound from a sound source in a direction making a clockwise angel .theta. from the front where a dead angel should be made. The subtraction provides the dead angle. Similarly, a dead angle on the side is also made to obtain a stereo characteristic. The directivity in the frequency characteristic of microphone is equalized to cancel the sensitivity in the dead angle. A stereo apparatus for forming the dead angles with two set of two filters having respective transfer characteristics determined by measurement and an adder is also disclosed.

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Osaka, Japan

Hiroki Furukawa