Apparatus for detecting fatigue and doze by voice, and recording medium

• US 6,876,964 B1
• Filed: 10/19/2000
• Issued: 04/05/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 10/05/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Director General of Ship Research Institute Ministry of Transport Hiroyuki Adachi, Electronic Navigation Research Institute, Kakuichi Shiomi
• Original Assignee: Electronic Navigation Research Institute, Independent Administrative Institution, Kakuichi Shiomi, Osaka Gas Information System Research Institute Company Limited (Osaka Gas Company Limited)
• Inventors: Shiomi, Kakuichi, Hirose, Shozo
• Primary Examiner(s): Chawan, Vijay
• Assistant Examiner(s): Opsasnick, Michael N.
• Application Number:
  US09/691,126
• Time in Patent Office: 1,629 Days
• Field of Search: 704/202, 704/231, 704/270, 704/274
• US Class Current: 704/202
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/18 for vehicle drivers or machine operators
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4803 Speech analysis specially adapted for diagnostic purposes
• CPC Class Codes: B60K 28/066 actuating a signalling device B60K28/063 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 2540/21 Voice
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/06 indicating a condition of sleep, e.g. anti-dozing alarms
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 17/26 Recognition of special voice characteristics, e.g. for use in lie detectors; Recognition of animal voices

Abstract

An apparatus for judging a fatigue level and/or a dozing state of a person by capturing voices uttered at different points of time from a microphone 5M. A computer performs chaos analysis of the digital data of the inputted voices and calculates Lyapunov exponents and judges a fatigue level and/or a dozing state based on the result of the chaos analysis.

Claims

1. An apparatus for detecting fatigue and doze by voice, comprising:

a controller capable of performing the following operations;

calculating Lyapunov exponents by chaos analysis of digital data of voices;

judging a fatigue level and/or a dozing state by comparing the calculated Lyapunov exponents of voices uttered at different points of time; and

a storing device for storing calculation results obtained by the operation of calculating the Lyapunov exponents,

wherein said controller is coupled to said storing device and further capable of performing the operation of comparing the Lyapunov exponents of voices uttered at different points of time based on the calculation results, which were obtained in advance by the operation of calculating the Lyapunov exponents and are stored in said storing device, during the judging operation.

2. The apparatus for detecting fatigue and doze by voice as set forth in claim 1, further comprising:

a microphone for inputting a voice as a sound signal and

an analog/digital converting device for converting the sound signal inputted to said microphone into digital data.

3. The apparatus for detecting fatigue and doze by voice as set forth in claim 1, wherein

the calculation of the Lyapunov exponents by said controller is performed by chaos analysis of digital data of sound signals recorded on a recording medium.

4. The apparatus for detecting fatigue and doze by voice as set forth in claim 1, wherein

said controller is further capable of performing the operation of removing a voiceless part from the digital data prior to the calculation of the Lyapunov exponents.

5. The apparatus for detecting fatigue and doze by voice as set forth in claim 4, wherein

said controller is further capable of performing the operation of generating digital data of a predetermined length by data based on said digital data, in the case where a data length of said digital data, after removing the voiceless part, is less than the predetermined length, prior to the calculation of the Lyapunov exponents.

6. A computer readable recording medium on which a program for causing a computer to detect a fatigue level and/or a dozing state by analysis of voices uttered at different points of time is recorded, including:

program code means for causing a computer to remove a voiceless part from digital data of voices;

program code means for causing a computer to generate digital data of a predetermined length from data based on loaded digital data, in the case where a data length after removing a voiceless part from said loaded digital data is less than the predetermined length;

program code means for causing a computer to give the loaded data to a chaos analyzing process for calculating Lyapunov exponents by chaos analysis;

program code means for causing a computer to store calculation results of the Lyapunov exponents calculated by said chaos analyzing process;

program code means for causing a computer to read the stored Lyapunov exponents; and

program code means for causing the computer to judge a fatigue level and/or a dozing state by comparing the read Lyapunov exponents of voices uttered at different points of time.