Hitachi, Ltd.

Xanavi Informatics Corporation

Nobuo Hataoka

Akira Ichikawa

Akio Amano

Hirohiko Sagawa

Haru Ando

Hiromichi Fujisawa

Masaru Ohki

Yoshito Nejime

Toshiyuki Aritsuka

Yoshiaki Asakawa

Hisashi Ikeda

Yoshiaki Kitazume

Tomoko Sakiyama

Akio Komatsu

Youichi Kaneko

Toshiaki Suzuki

Yasumasa Matsuda

Tsukasa Hasegawa

Toshiyuki Odaka

Juichi Morikawa

Takeshi Homma

Hisashi Takahashi

Yasunori Kawauchi

Tetsuo Takemura

Eiji Ohira

Hiroaki Kokubo

Kiyoshi Nagasawa

Kazuhiro Umemura

Shunichi Yajima

Yukio Kumagai

Shigeto Oheda

Tadashi Takamiya

Hideaki Kikuchi

Ryujiro Muramatsu

Shoichi Takeda

Toshikazu Takahashi

The present invention provides a technique, by speech input, to specify a location, even when a name or the like of the location is not accurately known, while driving. An in-vehicle apparatus mounted in a vehicle has a speech recognition function, and stores information shown on a signboard and a noun substitute in storage. If speech inputted from a speech input device includes a noun substitute and further includes at least a part of the information shown on the signboard, a response is decided according to the information shown on the signboard, and the decided response is outputted from an output device.

In-vehicle apparatus

An editing system having a dialogue operation type interface directs a next operation by referring an operation history. User information is inputted by using speech input/output, pointing by a finger and 3-D CG. A human image representing the system is displayed as an agent on the image output device, and a user error, availability to a queue and a utilization environment are extracted by the system and informed to the user through the agent. The system responds to the user intent by the image display or the speech output by using the agent as a medium so that a user friendly interface for graphics edition and image edition is provided.

Editing support system including an interactive interface

A sign language telephone device is offered which enables an aurally handicapped person who uses the sign language to converse with a normal person at a distant place who does not know the sign language. The sign language telephone device is placed on the side of the aurally handicapped person, and hand gestures of the sign language inputted from a sign language input means are recognized as the sign language, and the recognized sign language is translated to Japanese. The translated Japanese word train is converted to synthesized voices and it is transmitted to a videophone on the side of a normal person. The voices from the videophone are recognized, and the recognized Japanese is translated to the sign language to generate sign language animations and they are displayed on the screen of a TV set on the side of the aurally handicapped person. According to the present invention, it is made possible for an aurally handicapped person to have conversation easily with a normal person at a distant place who does not know the sign language through an existing network.

Sign language telephone device

Chronological telephone system

A user inputs voice through a voice recognition program, a microphone and an A/D converter while pointing by use of a pointing gesture, touch pen or the like with reference to an image displayed on a display unit. For the result of recognition of the inputted voice, a processing or display indicated by a candidate having the first rank of reliability of recognition is performed and an indication showing a plurality of candidates having the second rank and the lower ranks than that is displayed in a menu form on a display screen. In the case where there is an error (that is, in the case where the processing or display indicated by the candidate having the first rank is not a processing intended by the user or the user makes an erroneous input), the error is corrected in such a manner that a correct input candidate is selected by a finger, pen or the like from the displayed menu of candidates having the second rank and the lower ranks than that and a processing operation or display associated with the selected candidate is performed again.

Erroneous input processing method and apparatus in information

The speed of an input speech is changed without any change of the pitch of the input speech. Raw data of a speech are stored so that the speed of the speech can be modulated continuously on the basis of the raw data of the speech. In the speech speed conversion method, a speech speed conversion process for the input speech is carried out in a period designated when speech speed conversion is needed, which the speech speed conversion is not carried out in the other period. Further, in the speech speed conversion apparatus having a unit for inputting a speech, a speech speed conversion unit for changing the speed of the input speech, and a unit for supplying the output of the speech speed conversion unit as an output speech to listener's ears, the apparatus further includes a speech speed conversion switch, and a unit for outputting a speech while changing the speech speed of the input speech in a period in which the speech speed conversion switch is turned on, but for outputting a speech without any change of the input speech in the other period in which the speech speed conversion switch is turned off.

Audio signal storing apparatus having a function for converting speech

The present invention relates to a method of generating sounds by a graphical user interface (GUI) used on information processing apparatuses and computers and, more particularly, to a method of acoustically expressing image information to enable visually disabled people having difficulty in using GUI to operate apparatuses with GUI, and an apparatus for carrying out the method. A specific sound is assigned before hand to an object displayed in a drawing space on a display screen or the like, and the object is expressed acoustically by generating the sound by a sound generating device for a period of time corresponding to the length of the outline of the object, the travel of the object or the ratio of change in size of the object.

Method of acoustically expressing image information

A telephone exchange enables subscribers to use voice dialing more easily with existing telephone systems. The voice dialing does not require special input operations or preregistration of called parties. Rather, a subscriber can make a telephone call easily without having to perform multiple operations. The telephone exchange includes structure for discriminating dial pulse information, push-button tone information, and spoken information so that one or more of these types of information can be input by a caller to achieve connection to the called party.

Telephone exchange network using telephone exchanges with speech

A noise reduction system used for transmission and/or recognition of speech includes a speech analyzer for analyzing a noisy speech input signal thereby converting the speech signal into feature vectors such as autocorrelation coefficients, and a neural network for receiving the feature vectors of the noisy speech signal as its input. The neural network extracts from a codebook an index of prototype vectors corresponding to a noise-free equivalent to the noisy speech input signal. Feature vectors of speech are read out from the codebook on the basis of the index delivered as an output from the neural network, thereby causing the speech input to be reproduced on the basis of the feature vectors of speech read out from the codebook.

Noise reduction system using neural network

A speech recognition apparatus has: a speech input unit for inputting a speech; a speech analysis unit for analyzing the inputted speech to output the time series of a feature vector; a candidates selection unit for inputting the time series of a feature vector from the speech analysis unit to select a plurality of candidates of recognition result from the speech categories; and a discrimination processing unit for discriminating the selected candidates to obtain a final recognition result. The discrimination processing unit includes three components in the form of a pair generation unit for generating all of the two combinations of the n-number of candidates selected by said candidate selection unit a pair discrimination unit for discriminating which of the candidates of the combinations is more certain for each of all .sub.n C.sub.2 -number of combinations (or pairs) on the basis of the extracted result of the acoustic feature intrinsic to each of said candidate speeches and a final decision unit for collecting all the pair discrimination results obtained from the pair discrimination unit for each of all the .sub.n C.sub.2 -number of combinations (or pairs) to decide the final result. The pair discrimination unit handles the extracted result of the acoustic feature intrinsic to each of the candidate speeches as fuzzy information and accomplishes the discrimination processing on the basis of fuzzy logic algorithms, and the final decision unit accomplishes its collections on the basis of the fuzzy logic algorithms.

Speech recognition apparatus using neural network and fuzzy logic

A speech recognition apparatus has a speech input unit for inputting a speech; a speech analysis unit for analyzing the inputted speech to output the time series of a feature vector; a candidates selection unit for inputting the time series of a feature vector from the speech analysis unit to select a plurality of candidates of recognition result from the speech categories; and a discrimination processing unit for discriminating the selected candidates to obtain a final recognition result. The discrimination processing unit includes three components in the form of a pair generation unit for generating all of the two combinations of the n-number of candidates selected by said candidate selection unit, a pair discrimination unit for discriminating which of the candidates of the combinations is more certain for each of all .sub.n C.sub.2 -number of combinations (or pairs) on the basis of the extracted result of the acoustic feature intrinsic to each of said candidate speeches, and a final decision unit for collecting all the pair discrimination results obtained from the pair discrimination unit for each of all the .sub.n C.sub.2 -number of combinations (or pairs) to decide the final result. The pair discrimination unit handles the extracted result of the acoustic feature intrinsic to each of the candidate speeches as fuzzy information and accomplishes the discrimination processing on the basis of fuzzy logic algorithms, and the final decision unit accomplishes its collections on the basis of the fuzzy logic algorithms.

A speech recognition apparatus including a memory for storing with respect to each feature specific to a particular phoneme a name of a process and a procedure of the process which is performed in order to search whether the presence of a feature specific to a certain type of speech is included in a feature vector series, and for storing a table in which the names of the processes in a performed for all the categories of speech to be recognized. The information stored in the memory is used to discriminate between two categories and provides ways for interpreting the results of the process. The recognition processes performed the discrimination is done in accordance with the information stored in the table.

Speech recognition apparatus capable of discriminating between similar

A character voice communication system including high efficiency voice coding system for encoding and transmitting speech information at a high efficiency and a voice character input/output system for converting speech information into character information or receiving character information and transmitting speech or character information are organically integrated. A speech analyzer and a speech synthesizer are shared by both the voice coding and the voice character input/output systems. Communication apparatus is also provided which allows mutual conversion between speech signals and character codes.

Character voice communication system

A speech recognition method makes it possible to improve the accuracy of recognition of input speech and is capable of operating on a real time basis. This is accomplished by generating from the input speech signal a difference signal which indicates whether the speech power of the input speech is increasing or decreasing for each frame. The similarity between the input speech and a standard pattern is then calculated for each frame, and this is then followed by correcting the similarity calculation on the basis of the generated difference signal and a difference signal relating to the standard pattern obtained from storage. The matching of the input speech and the standard pattern is then effected by using the corrected similarity, and the input speech is then recognized from the result of this matching. Thus, a spectrum matching distance weighted by power information of speech can be obtained in real time.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Nobuo Hataoka