Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

Kazuhito Koishida

Tian Wang

Sanjeev Mehrotra

Wei-Ge Chen

Hosam Adel Khalil

Wei-ge Chen

Xiaoqin Sun

Chao He

Vladimir Cuperman

Shankar Lakshmi Regunathan

Allen Gersho

Cem Keskin

Khuram Shahid

Bill Chau

Jaeyoun Kim

Steven Nabil Bathiche

Harshavardhana Narayana Kikkeri

Alexander A Popov

Uros Batricevic

Hosam A Khalil

David Nister

Kunal Mukerjee

Mu Han

Raja Bose

David Keesu Kim

Christina Summer Chen

Jonathan Bernard Lester

Ruchita Bhargava

Ian Simon

Michelle Lynn Holtmann

Amir H Majidimehr

Radhika Jandhyala

Hiroshi Horii

Michael Iuzzolino

Tom Butcher

Feng Zhuge

An intelligent assistant records speech spoken by a first user and determines a self-selection score for the first user. The intelligent assistant sends the self-selection score to another intelligent assistant, and receives a remote-selection score for the first user from the other intelligent assistant. The intelligent assistant compares the self-selection score to the remote-selection score. If the self-selection score is greater than the remote-selection score, the intelligent assistant responds to the first user and blocks subsequent responses to all other users until a disengagement metric of the first user exceeds a blocking threshold. If the self-selection score is less than the remote-selection score, the intelligent assistant does not respond to the first user.

Multi-user intelligent assistance

Example speech enhancement systems include a spatio-temporal residual network configured to receive video data containing a target speaker and extract visual features from the video data, an autoencoder configured to receive input of an audio spectrogram and extract audio features from the audio spectrogram, and a squeeze-excitation fusion block configured to receive input of visual features from a layer of the spatio-temporal residual network and input of audio features from a layer of the autoencoder, and to provide an output to the decoder of the autoencoder. The decoder is configured to output a mask configured based upon the fusion of audio features and visual features by the squeeze-excitation fusion block, and the instructions are executable to apply the mask to the audio spectrogram to generate an enhanced magnitude spectrogram, and to reconstruct an enhanced waveform from the enhanced magnitude spectrogram.

Audio-visual speech enhancement

Mobile devices provide a variety of techniques for presenting messages from sources to a user. However, when the message pertains to the presence of the user at a location, the available communications techniques may exhibit deficiencies, e.g., reliance on the memory of the source and/or user of the existence and content of a message between its initiation and the user's visit to the location, or reliance on the communication accessibility of the user, the device, and/or the source during the user's location visit. Presented herein are techniques for enabling a mobile device, at a first time, to receive a request to present an audio message during the presence of the user at a location; and, at a second time, detecting the presence of the user at the location, and presenting the audio message to the user, optionally without awaiting a request from the user to present the message.

Location-based audio messaging

Computer systems, methods, and storage media for generating a continuous motion control using neurological data and for associating the continuous motion control with a continuous user interface control to enable analog control of the user interface control. The user interface control is modulated through a user's physical movements within a continuous range of motion associated with the continuous motion control. The continuous motion control enables fine-tuned and continuous control of the corresponding user interface control as opposed to control limited to a small number of discrete settings.

Continuous motion controls operable using neurological data

Computer systems, methods, and storage media for changing the state of an application by detecting neurological user intent data associated with a particular operation of a particular application state, and changing the application state so as to enable execution of the particular operation as intended by the user. The application state is automatically changed to align with the intended operation, as determined by received neurological user intent data, so that the intended operation is performed. Some embodiments relate to a computer system creating or updating a state machine, through a training process, to change the state of an application according to detected neurological data.

Changing an application state using neurological data

An array of microphones placed on a mobile robot provides multiple channels of audio signals. A received set of audio signals is called an audio segment, which is divided into multiple frames. A phase analysis is performed on a frame of the signals from each pair of microphones. If both microphones are in an active state during the frame, a candidate angle is generated for each such pair of microphones. The result is a list of candidate angles for the frame. This list is processed to select a final candidate angle for the frame. The list of candidate angles is tracked over time to assist in the process of selecting the final candidate angle for an audio segment.

Sound source localization using phase spectrum

An audio decoder provides a combination of decoding components including components implementing base band decoding, spectral peak decoding, frequency extension decoding and channel extension decoding techniques. The audio decoder decodes a compressed bitstream structured by a bitstream syntax scheme to permit the various decoding components to extract the appropriate parameters for their respective decoding technique.

Bitstream syntax for multi-process audio decoding

Various embodiments enable audio data, such as music data, to be captured, by a device, from a background environment and processed to formulate a query that can then be transmitted to a content recognition service. In one or more embodiments, multiple queries are transmitted to the content recognition service. In at least some embodiments, subsequent queries can progressively incorporate previous queries plus additional data that is captured. In one or more embodiments, responsive to receiving the query, the content recognition service can employ a multi-stage matching technique to identify content items responding to the query. This matching technique can be employed as queries are progressively received.

Query and matching for content recognition

An audio encoder encodes side information into a compressed audio bitstream containing encoding parameters used by the encoder for one or more encoding techniques, such as a noise-mask-ratio curve used for rate control. A transcoder uses the encoder generated side information to transcode the audio from the original compressed bitstream having an initial bit-rate into a second bitstream having a new bit-rate. Because the side information is derived from the original audio, the transcoder is able to better maintain audio quality of the transcoding. The side information also allows the transcoder to re-encode from an intermediate decoding/encoding stage for faster and lower complexity transcoding.

Audio transcoder using encoder-generated side information to transcode to target bit-rate

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Kazuhito Koishida