Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Seigou Yasuda

Junichiroh Fujimoto

Tomofumi Nakatani

Takashi Ariyoshi

Toshiki Kawamoto

Hiroshi Aizawa

Tetsuya Muroi

Kunihiro Kaneuchi

Masao Kasuga

Syoji Kuriki

Peter Grennan

Kazuhiko Nishimura

A display unit displays at least a window from among a plurality of windows. A window switching unit switches a currently active window between windows among the plurality of windows in accordance with a corresponding voice-input, the voice-input comprising relationship command indicating a relationship between the currently active window and a window to be activated from the windows among the plurality of windows. The relationship command indicates a relationship concerning an arrangement of the plurality of windows, the relationship comprising a relationship between the currently active window and a window to be activated from the windows among the plurality of windows.

Window control apparatus and method having function for controlling windows by means of voice-input

A method of determining a sound localization filter for approximation of a head related transfer function. The method comprises storing a plurality of sets of initial parameters with respect to a plurality of predetermined direction angles about a front position of a listener into a memory, reading one of the sets of initial parameters from the memory in accordance with a localization shift signal, calculating an optimum filter parameter based on the read initial parameters, the optimum filter parameter needed to approximate desired frequency characteristics of the head related transfer function, determining filter coefficients of the sound localization filter based on the optimum filter parameter and supplying the determined filter coefficients to a coefficient buffer provided for the sound localization filter.

Method of determining a sound localization filter and a sound localization control system incorporating the filter

Window control apparatus and method having function for controlling

A standard pattern comparing system recognizes a data by comparing the data with a standard pattern registered in a dictionary, a plurality of kinds of data being supplied to the standard pattern comparing system. The standard pattern comparing system has a plurality of dictionaries including a plurality of normal dictionaries and one master dictionary. All standard patterns stored in each normal dictionary and some of the standard patterns stored in the master dictionary corresponding to one kind of data. There being no duplicate standard pattern included in more than two dictionaries, and each standard pattern included in the master dictionary being commonly used for at least more than two normal dictionaries to correspond to an arbitrary kind of data. The present invention is especially useful for a voice recognition system in which a speaker dependent voice recognizer is used for a personal computer which manages a plurality of application programs. A user of the voice recognizer does not have to register some duplicate words commonly used for at least more than two application programs because of the master dictionary.

Standard pattern comparing system for eliminating duplicative data

A speech recognition system in which speech information inputted from a microphone is recognized and a speech signal corresponding to the speech information is generated and converted into a set of characters equivalent to keystroke information normally inputted from a keyboard, the set of characters being supplied to a keyboard buffer, so that an application program running on a computer system executes a desired job. The speech recognition system comprises a first interrupt processing part which, after receiving an interrupt signal due to a depression of a key on the keyboard, checks that information within the keyboard buffer accords with a first predefined keystroke code, turns a first flag ON only when the information accords with the first predefined keystroke code and terminates a first interrupt procedure, and a second interrupt processing part which, after the first interrupt routine is terminated, enables a second interrupt into operation of the application program only when the first flag is turned ON, so that a speech information input procedure is started to provide the keystroke information thus recognized.

Speech recognition system including interrupt scheme that avoids

A voice recognition apparatus includes a coefficient memory for storing at least one coefficient for correcting a degree of similarity which is obtained by either one of the speaker-independent recognition and the speaker-dependent recognition. The apparatus also includes a voice identification circuit for comparing the degrees of similarity of the candidates obtained by either one of the speaker-independent recognition and the speaker-dependent recognition with corrected degrees of similarity of the candidates related to the other recognition type which are obtained by performing a predetermined operation to the degree of similarity of each candidate which is supplied from the other recognition type. Then the voice identification decides one candidate having the highest degree of similarity to be an identification result.

Speech recognition method and apparatus

A reference pattern renewing method includes inputting an input pattern of an utterance of a word, comparing the input pattern with reference patterns stored in a dictionary memory to thereby generate at least a first candidate having the highest degree of similarity and a second candidate having the second highest degree of similarity, and calculating a ratio of the highest degree of similarity to the second highest degree of similarity. The method further includes determining whether or not the ratio is equal to or less than a predetermined threshold value, calculating, from the input pattern, a renewed reference pattern to be substituted for a corresponding one of the reference patterns when it is determined that the ratio of the highest degree of similarity to the second highest degree of similarity is neither equal to nor less than the predetermined threshold value, and registering the renewed reference pattern in the dictionary memory instead of the corresponding one of the reference patterns.

Method of renewing reference pattern stored in dictionary

A method for forming a reference voice pattern to be stored in a library for use in identifying an unknown input sound. The method comprises the steps of inputting a first sound pronounced for a particular letter combination by a speaker to form a first voice pattern, the first voice pattern represented by a sound energy level as a function of time; examining the first voice pattern to determine whether or not an intermediate voiceless interval is present within a predetermined time period at least from either a beginning or terminating end of the first voice pattern; repeating the inputting and examining steps for a second sound; combining the first and second voice patterns to define the reference voice pattern, wherein, if either of the first and second voice patterns has a voiced portion in the predetermined time period and the other of the first and second voice patterns does not have a corresponding voiced portion in the predetermined time period, the combining step comprises adding the voiced portion to said other of the first and second voice patterns.

Methods for forming reference voice patterns, and methods for comparing

A voice actuated dialing apparatus has a feature extraction part for extracting a feature of an input data, a storage for storing registered standard patterns and corresponding telephone numbers of destination subscribers, a pattern matching part for comparing a standard pattern of the feature extracted by the feature extracting part with the registered standard patterns so as to recognize a predetermined one of the registered standard patterns which matches the standard pattern of the extracted feature, a speech synthesis part for outputting a speech corresponding to the predetermined standard pattern read out from the storage for confirmation of a result of the recognition, and a dialing circuit for dialing to a predetermined one of the registered telephone numbers corresponding to the predetermined standard pattern in a voice-dialing mode.

Voice actuated dialing apparatus

A voice or sound recognition system including a microphone for converting a voice into an electrical voice signal, a frequency analyzer for generating a voice pattern in the form of a time-frequency distribution, and a matching unit for matching the voice pattern with registered voice patterns. A voice pattern sometimes contains a bass bar section starting from the beginning of the voice pattern over a time period. In one form of the present invention, the bass bar section is detected and/or eliminated before processing the voice pattern for the purpose of registration or matching. The voice level is sometimes too strong or too weak for appropriate processing. In another form of the present invention, a voice recognition system including a voice input cancelling function is provided. In addition, a system for detecting a voice interval for use in voice data processing, including a device for determining a start point of the voice interval is provided.

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Yokosuka, Japan

Seigou Yasuda