Daimler Ag

Daimler Chrysler Ag

Daimler-benz Ag

Harman Becker Automotive Systems Gmbh

Klaus Linhard

Norbert Niemczyk

Markus Buck

Tim Haulick

Guido Kolano

Marcus Hofmann

Alfred Kaltenmeier

Gerhard Schaller

Christian Birk

Christian Weiss

In a speech device for a hands-free system in a vehicle, at least one microphone is arranged on a guide element encompassing a safety belt. The guide element is fixed to a free end of a holding element, along which there is arranged a first line section of a signal line and/or a supply line of the microphone. One attachable end of the holding element that is opposite the free end, can be fixed in particular to a vehicle seat associated with the safety belt by means of a detachable mechanical connection that comprises at least one electric contact for the microphone.

Speaker device for a vehicle

A sound system which has, for example, a radio, a cassette and a CD player is usually already installed in cars as standard or as an option. In addition, a better sound system includes a box system which has a tweeter and a woofer. In order to provide a speaker box which is suitable particularly for dispensing frequencies below 150 Hz and at the same time has neat pulses accompanied at the same time by little distortion, pulse dynamics and is highly effective, a sound transducer () is introduced into the supporting structure of the vehicle. This takes place in such a manner that subcompartments which are separated from each other adjoin each of its two membrane sides. In this case, the two subcompartments of the speaker box are formed by at least two elements () of the supporting structure of the vehicle (). The sound transducer () is particularly integrated into a region in which two elements () of the supporting structure meet each other, thus resulting in an installation position which can be realized in a structurally and economically favorable manner.

Bandpass box in the supporting structure of a vehicle

To ensure the same high quality of acoustic radiation from audio systems on each seat of current vehicles, an acoustic device is provided for generating audio signals, which allows sound sources to be integrated into the area located near the headrest of a vehicle seat such that the volume can be regulated in an individual manner without unduly disturbing the other passengers in a vehicle. The headrest does not comprise any loudspeakers, thus is safe regarding accident protection. The acoustic near field at the headrest is generated by means of a sound channel. The loudspeaker is disposed inside the backrest or under the seat, for example, while the sound channel terminates in the headrest. Tuned pipes, the end of which is adjusted to the acoustic impedance of the clearance zone, are used as a sound channel.

Acoustic sound routing in vehicles

Voice command operated systems are being installed in modern motor vehicles with increasing frequency. Such systems should be operable by various vehicle occupants and from various seating positions. A new type of speech recognition system is described, which is good at accomplishing these tasks. Therein, for regulating the speech recognition system, the reception characteristic of a a directionally selective microphone array () is controlled by an optimization unit (). These speech signals are then processed in a speech recognizer () at least parallel in time. Then, on the basis of the results provided by the speech recognizer (), the reception characteristic of the microphone array () is so controlled by an optimization unit (), that the recognition performance of the speech recognizer () downstream of the optimization unit () is optimized. Herein, the speech recognizer is supplied with the received speech signals from different spatial directions parallel or at least quasi-parallel via the speech channels (), so that this selects and further processes those speech signals that have the potential for the best possible recognition performance. On the basis of the recognition results, the optimization unit () obtains via the speech recognizer the necessary regulatory signals (), in order to optimize the reception characteristics of the microphone array () by means of the optimization unit () with regard to the respective direction from which speech signals are received, which have the potential for the best possible recognition performance.

Intelligent acoustic microphone fronted with speech recognizing feedback

The invention relates to a motor vehicle, in which at least one microphone () is mounted in the headlining) of a passenger cell of the vehicle. The microphone is mounted in a location, which is concealed by a sun visor () that is pivotally mounted on the headlining () when said visor has been pivoted to lie against the headlining (). At least the area () of the sun visor () that conceals the microphone is configured to conduct sound.

Motor vehicle having a microphone

A parametric loudspeaker system is described which is based upon the FM-modulation of an ultrasound carrier. Known systems work with AM-modulation. The FM-modulation produces a good matching to the resonant transducer such as the conventionally employed piezo-ceramic transducers. The resonance slope of the transducers is used for FM/AM-conversion. This FM-resonance principle can advantageously be employed in a multi-path loudspeaker system, in which the transducer works in the optimal resonance range in each of the paths. With the conventional AM-modulation this is not possible. The FM-resonance principle can also be used in resonance-free or resonance-poor transducers, such as for example electrostatic transducers.

Ultrasound based parametric loudspeaker system

The present invention relates to a method with which speech is captured in a noisy environment with as high a speech quality as possible. To this end, a compact array of, for example, two single microphones is combined to form one system through signal processing methods consisting of adaptive beam formation and spectral subtraction. Through the combination with a spectral subtraction, the reference signal of the beam former is freed from speech signal components to the extent that a reference signal of the interference is formed and the beam former produces high gains.

Noise reduction method with self-controlling interference frequency

For an especially low loss and echo free communication between several participants in a room () an inventive process for the compensation of losses of a signal(S) along a transmission path between at least one transmission point () and one receiving point () in a room () determining the transmission path of signal (S) and via the transmission paths at least one parameter of an associated transmission function will be determined, whereby via the determined parameters the signal level for a given position (Pthrough P) on the transmission path is controlled. Additionally an especially suitable device is provided for the implementation of the process.

Process and device for compensating for signal loss

For a selective sound propagation pattern that has an especially high directivity, including in the bass frequency region, there is inventively provided a loudspeaker box ( ) with a housing ( ) and at least one loudspeaker ( ) with chassis ( ) which is surrounded by a housing wall ( ) in such a way that in the low frequency region the rear side and front side sound of the loudspeaker ( ) overlay themselves with a sound increase in a preferred direction.

Speaker box

The present invention relates to a method of reducing noise in a speech detection system. The phases of at least two noise-affected signals are estimated. The phase estimate and the phase compensation required for the noise reduction are performed in the frequency domain. The background noise and the transient behavior of the enclosed space are simultaneously estimated.

Method of estimating delay in noise-affected voice channels

A method that can be used not only for elimination of noise, for example in automatic speech recognition, but also to improve the voice quality for people, for instance during use of the speaker function of a car phone. The noise reduction is executed with two or multiple channels in such a manner that the temporal and architectural acoustical signal properties of speech and interference are utilized step-by-step and systematically. According to the method a pivotable, acoustic directional lobe is produced for the individual voice channels by respective digital directional filters and a linear phase estimation to correct for a phase difference between the two channels. The noise in the individual voice channels is estimated during speaking pauses, and the temporally stationary noise sources are damped by means of spectral subtraction. The individual voice channels are subsequently added whereby the statistical disturbances of spectral subtraction are averaged. Finally, the composite signal resulting from the addition is subsequently processed with a modified coherence function to damp diffuse noise and echo components.

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Schelklingen, Germany

Klaus Linhard