Method and apparatus for mapping of conference call participants using positional presence

• US 20090086949A1
• Filed: 09/27/2007
• Published: 04/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RingCentral Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Siemens Enterprise Communications, Inc. (Atos SE)
• Inventors: Beyda, William J., Caspi, Rami
• Granted Patent: US 8,243,902 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/202.10
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/18 Comparators
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/38 Displays
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/41 using speaker recognition speaker recognition per se G10L17/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/6045 Identity confirmation
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2242/30 Determination of the location of a subscriber
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/385 using speech signals
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/387 using subscriber identification cards
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/568 audio processing specific to telephonic conferencing, e.g. spatial distribution, mixing of participants echo suppression in two-way loud-speaking telephone systems H04M9/02; sound field processing per se H04S7/30

Abstract

A method includes receiving audio electronic business card data during a conference; comparing said audio electronic business card data with voices of conference speakers to confirm identities of said speakers; performing an acoustic triangulation to determine a position of speakers; correlating a position of said speakers with said identities; and displaying locations of said speakers.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving audio electronic business card data during a conference;

comparing said audio electronic business card data with voices of conference speakers to confirm identities of said speakers;

performing an acoustic triangulation to determine a position of speakers;

correlating a position of said speakers with said identities; and

displaying locations of said speakers.

2. A method in accordance with claim 1, said audio electronic business card data comprising digitized voice samples.

3. A method in accordance with claim 1 said audio electronic business card data comprising preprocessed voice recognition samples.

4. A method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising updating presence contexts for individual ones of said speakers responsive to confirming identities of said speakers.

5. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein said transmitting and receiving said audio electronic business card data includes transmitting and receiving using a Bluetooth protocol.

6. A method in accordance with claim 1, said audio electronic business card data includes vCard data.

7. A telecommunications system, comprising:

a network;

a conference control unit operably coupled to the network and configured to poll a plurality of user devices for audio electronic business card data and receive said data from said plurality of user devices and identify participants to a conference based on said audio electronic business card data; and

a conference mapping unit configured to identify locations of participants responsive to their speaking and to display a map of said locations while respective participants are speaking.

8. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 8, wherein said audio electronic business card data includes one or more speech samples, and wherein said conference control unit is configured to perform an identification by comparing said one or more speech samples to conference speaker voices.

9. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 8, wherein said audio electronic business card data includes preprocessed voice recognition data, and wherein said conference control unit is configured to perform an identification by comparing said preprocessed voice recognition data to data derived from conference speaker voices.

10. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 8, further comprising a presence control unit, the presence control unit configured to update a presence status of a user based on an identification from the audio electronic business card data.

11. A telecommunications system in accordance with claim 8, wherein said conference mapping unit is configured to perform an acoustic triangulation to determine a location of a particular speaker.

12. A telecommunications method, comprising:

receiving audio electronic business card data at a conference control unit;

identifying conference participants from the audio electronic business card data and speech data of conference participants;

determining locations of the conference participants responsive to detecting individual speech and said identifying and performing an acoustic triangulation.

13. A telecommunications method in accordance with claim 13, wherein said identifying comprises comparing said speech data with one or more speech samples on said audio electronic business card data.

14. A telecommunications method in accordance with claim 13, wherein said identifying comprises comparing data derived from said speech data with preprocessed voice recognition data on said audio electronic business card data.

15. A telecommunications method in accordance with claim 13, further comprising updating a presence status of a user based on an identification from the audio electronic business card data.