Information processing apparatus and method, and program

• US 20070033050A1
• Filed: 08/03/2006
• Published: 02/08/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 08/05/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Asano, Yasuharu, Yamamoto, Noriyuki
• Granted Patent: US 8,407,055 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/270
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/433 using audio data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/436 using biological or physiological data of a human being, e.g. blood pressure, facial expression, gestures
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 17/26 Recognition of special voice characteristics, e.g. for use in lie detectors; Recognition of animal voices

Abstract

An information processing apparatus includes an obtaining unit that obtains meta-information concerning content; a predicting unit that predicts an emotion of a user who is viewing the content from the meta-information obtained by the obtaining unit; and a recognizing unit that recognizes an emotion of the user using the emotion predicted by the predicting unit and user information acquired from the user.

Claims

1. An information processing apparatus comprising:

obtaining means for obtaining meta-information concerning content;

predicting means for predicting an emotion of a user who is viewing the content from the meta-information obtained by the obtaining means; and

recognizing means for recognizing an emotion of the user using the emotion predicted by the predicting means and user information acquired from the user.

2. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the recognizing means performs weighting for the emotion of the user according to the emotion predicted by the predicting means.

3. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising sound-feature-value extracting means for collecting sound emitted from the user and extracting a feature value from the collected sound,

wherein the recognizing means uses the feature value extracted by the sound-feature-value extracting means as the user information.

4. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising image-feature-value extracting means for capturing an image of the user and extracting a feature value from the captured image,

wherein the recognizing means uses the feature value extracted by the image-feature-value extracting means as the user information.

5. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the meta-information obtained by the obtaining means comprises text information concerning the content.

6. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the content includes audio information, the obtaining means extracts a feature value from the audio information, and obtains the extracted feature value as the meta-information.

7. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the content includes speech information, the obtaining means recognizes speech based on the speech information, and obtains text extracted from the recognized speech as the meta-information.

8. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the content includes video information, the obtaining means obtains information concerning performers appearing in video based on the video information as the meta-information.

9. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the content has time information attached thereto, the obtaining means extracts the meta-information in accordance with the progress of the content according to the time information.

10. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein:

the predicting means includes a table used to predict the emotion of the user;

the emotion of the user recognized by the recognizing means is supplied to the predicting means; and

the predicting means updates the table in response to the supplied recognized emotion of the user.

11. An information processing method comprising the steps of:

obtaining meta-information concerning content;

predicting an emotion of a user who is viewing the content from the obtained meta-information; and

recognizing an emotion of the user using the predicted emotion and information acquired from the user.

12. A program causing a computer to execute a process comprising the steps of:

obtaining meta-information concerning content;

predicting an emotion of a user who is viewing the content from the obtained meta-information; and

recognizing an emotion of the user using the predicted emotion and information acquired from the user.

13. An information processing apparatus comprising:

an obtaining unit that obtains meta-information concerning content;

a predicting unit that predicts an emotion of a user who is viewing the content from the meta-information obtained by the obtaining unit; and

a recognizing unit that recognizes an emotion of the user using the emotion predicted by the predicting unit and user information acquired from the user.