Nuance Communications, Inc.

Cerence Operating Company

Simon Graf

Markus Buck

Tobias Wolff

Tobias Herbig

Tim Haulick

Jan Philip Janssen

Timo Matheja

Christophe Ris

A method, computer program product, and computer system for identifying, by a computing device, a plurality of sources. One or more feature values of a plurality of features may be assigned to a first source of the plurality of sources. One or more feature values of the plurality of features may be assigned to a second source of the plurality of sources. A first score for the first source and a second score for the second source may be determined based upon, at least in part, the one or more feature values assigned to the first source and the second source. One of the first source and the second source may be selected for spatial processing based upon, at least in part, the first score for the first source and the second score for the second source.

System and method for feature based beam steering

A low-complexity method and apparatus for detection of voiced speech and pitch estimation is disclosed that is capable of dealing with special constraints given by applications where low latency is required, such as in-car communication (ICC) systems. An example embodiment employs very short frames that may capture only a single excitation impulse of voiced speech in an audio signal. A distance between multiple such impulses, corresponding to a pitch period, may be determined by evaluating phase differences between low-resolution spectra of the very short frames. An example embodiment may perform pitch estimation directly in a frequency domain based on the phase differences and reduce computational complexity by obviating transformation to a time domain to perform the pitch estimation. In an event the phase differences are determined to be substantially linear, an example embodiment enhances voice quality of the voiced speech by applying speech enhancement to the audio signal.

Low complexity detection of voiced speech and pitch estimation

Systems and methods are introduced to perform noise suppression of an audio signal. The audio signal includes foreground speech components and background noise. The foreground speech components correspond to speech from a user's speaking into an audio receiving device. The background noise includes babble noise that includes speech from one or more interfering speakers. A soft speech detector determines, dynamically, a speech detection result indicating a likelihood of a presence of the foreground speech components in the audio signal. The speech detection result is employed to control, dynamically, an amount of attenuation of the noise suppression to reduce the babble noise in the audio signal. Further processing achieves a more stationary background and reduction of musical tones in the audio signal.

Babble noise suppression

A method, computer program product, and computer system for receiving, by a computing device, a first signal emitted from one or more sources. A second signal may be received emitted from the one or more sources. A first confidence level that the wake-up-word is included in the first signal may be determined. A second confidence level that the wake-up-word is included in the second signal may be determined. It may be identified that the wake-up-word originated from a first source of the one or more sources based upon, at least in part, the first and second confidence levels. The first source may be enabled to participate in a dialog phase.

System and method for speech enhancement in multisource environments

A method, computer program product, and computer system for receiving, by a computing device, a speech signal from a speaker via a plurality of microphone zones. A temporal cue based confidence may be determined for at least a portion of the plurality of microphone zones. A power cue based confidence may be determined for at least a portion of the plurality of microphone zones. A microphone zone of the plurality of microphone zones from which to use an output signal of the speaker may be identified based upon, at least in part, a combination of the temporal cue based confidence and the power cue based confidence.

System and method for temporal and power based zone detection in speaker dependent microphone environments

Methods and apparatus to process microphone signals by a speech enhancement module to generate an audio stream signal including first and second metadata for use by a speech recognition module. In an embodiment, speech recognition is performed using endpointing information including transitioning from a silence state to a maybe speech state, in which data is buffered, based on the first metadata and transitioning to a speech state, in which speech recognition is performed, based upon the second metadata.

Methods and apparatus for speech segmentation using multiple metadata

A method, computer program product, and computer system for receiving, by a computing device, a first signal emitted from one or more sources. A second signal may be received emitted from the one or more sources. A first confidence level that the wake-up-word is included in the first signal may be determined. A second confidence level that the wake-up-word is included in the second signal may be determined. It may be identified that the wake-up-word originated from a first source of the one or more sources based upon, at least in part, the first and second confidence levels. The first source may be enabled to participate in a dialog phase. The second source may be excluded from participating in the dialog phase.

Growing community of inventors

Ulm, Germany

Simon Graf