Ear sensor assembly for speech processing
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A sound processing apparatus, comprising:
- a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal, wherein the output signal from the microphone corresponds to a portion of speech and has a different spectral response than a spectral response of the same speech from the mouth of a user; and
a circuit that normalizes the output signal from the microphone by applying a normalization function to the output signal from the microphone, the normalized signal having a spectral response that is closer to the spectral response of the speech from the mouth of the user than the spectral response of the output signal from the microphone;
wherein the normalization function is an inverse of a transfer function that is based on a ratio of a spectral response of a speech sample detected from the mouth of a sampled individual to a spectral response of the speech sample detected from the ear of the sampled individual.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
An ear sensor apparatus includes a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal. The apparatus may include a seal for substantially blocking ambient sound signals from reaching the microphone and an interface to convey the output signal to a remote speech recognition apparatus. The output signal may be normalized so that the normalized output signal is more representative of speech from a user'"'"'s mouth than speech detected from the user'"'"'s ear.
-
Citations
16 Claims
-
1. A sound processing apparatus, comprising:
-
a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal, wherein the output signal from the microphone corresponds to a portion of speech and has a different spectral response than a spectral response of the same speech from the mouth of a user; and a circuit that normalizes the output signal from the microphone by applying a normalization function to the output signal from the microphone, the normalized signal having a spectral response that is closer to the spectral response of the speech from the mouth of the user than the spectral response of the output signal from the microphone; wherein the normalization function is an inverse of a transfer function that is based on a ratio of a spectral response of a speech sample detected from the mouth of a sampled individual to a spectral response of the speech sample detected from the ear of the sampled individual. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 15, 16)
-
-
9. A sound processing apparatus, comprising:
-
a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal, wherein the output signal from the microphone corresponds to a portion of speech and has a different spectral response than a spectral response of the same speech from the mouth of a user; and a circuit that normalizes the output signal from the microphone by applying a normalization function to the output signal from the microphone, the normalized signal having a spectral response that is closer to the spectral response of the speech from the mouth of the user than the spectral response of the output signal from the microphone; wherein the normalization function is an inverse of a transfer function that is based on a ratio of a time domain response of a speech sample detected from the mouth of a sampled individual to a time domain response of the speech sample detected from the ear of the sampled individual.
-
-
10. A sound processing apparatus, comprising:
-
a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal, wherein the output signal from the microphone corresponds to a portion of speech and has a different spectral response than a spectral response of the same speech from the mouth of a user; and a circuit that normalizes the output signal from the microphone by applying a normalization function to the output signal from the microphone, the normalized signal having a spectral response that is closer to the spectral response of the speech from the mouth of the user than the spectral response of the output signal from the microphone; wherein the normalization function is adaptively established by an adaptive filter that models a difference between a sound signal from the ear and a corresponding sound signal from the mouth; wherein the normalization function is based on a transformation matrix that is selected to decorrelate a current value of the output signal from the microphone from a past history of output signal values.
-
-
11. A sound processing apparatus, comprising:
-
a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal, wherein the output signal from the microphone corresponds to a portion of speech and has a different spectral response than a spectral response of the same speech from the mouth of a user; and a circuit that normalizes the output signal from the microphone by applying a normalization function to the output signal from the microphone, the normalized signal having a spectral response that is closer to the spectral response of the speech from the mouth of the user than the spectral response of the output signal from the microphone; wherein the normalization function is adaptively established by an adaptive filter that models a difference between a sound signal from the ear and a corresponding sound signal from the mouth; wherein the normalization function is based on a transformed version of an input vector that models the difference between the sound signal from the ear and the corresponding sound signal from the mouth.
-
-
12. A sound processing apparatus, comprising:
-
a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal, wherein the output signal from the microphone corresponds to a portion of speech and has a different spectral response than a spectral response of the same speech from the mouth of a user; and a circuit that normalizes the output signal from the microphone by applying a normalization function to the output signal from the microphone, the normalized signal having a spectral response that is closer to the spectral response of the speech from the mouth of the user than the spectral response of the output signal from the microphone; wherein the normalization function is adaptively established by an adaptive filter that models a difference between a sound signal from the ear and a corresponding sound signal from the mouth; wherein the normalization function is based on a non-transformed version of an input vector that models the difference between the sound signal from the ear and the corresponding sound signal from the mouth.
-
-
13. A sound processing apparatus, comprising:
-
a microphone positionable with respect to an ear canal to detect sound signals from the ear canal and to generate a corresponding output signal, wherein the output signal from the microphone corresponds to a portion of speech and has a different spectral response than a spectral response of the same speech from the mouth of a user; and a circuit that normalizes the output signal from the microphone by applying a normalization function to the output signal from the microphone, the normalized signal having a spectral response that is closer to the spectral response of the speech from the mouth of the user than the spectral response of the output signal from the microphone; wherein the normalization function is adaptively established by an adaptive filter that models a difference between a sound signal from the ear and a corresponding sound signal from the mouth; wherein the normalization function is established by sampling speech data from an ear and a mouth of a user for a period of time and adaptively generating the normalization function over the period of time. - View Dependent Claims (14)
-
Specification