Method for determining alcohol consumption, and recording medium and terminal for carrying out same

• US 9,899,039 B2
• Filed: 01/24/2014
• Issued: 02/20/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/24/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Foundation of Soongsil University-Industry Cooperation
• Original Assignee: Foundation of Soongsil University-Industry Cooperation
• Inventors: Bae, Myung Jin, Lee, Sang Gil, Baek, Geum Ran
• Primary Examiner(s): Desir, Pierre-Louis
• Assistant Examiner(s): KIM, JONATHAN C
• Application Number:
  US15/113,743
• Publication Number:
  US 20170032804A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,488 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2010/0009 Testing for drug or alcohol abuse
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2503/22 Motor vehicles operators, e.g. drivers, pilots, captains
• 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: A61B 5/4845 Toxicology, e.g. by detection of alcohol, drug or toxic products A61B5/4848 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/16 using artificial neural networks
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/12 the excitation function being a code excitation, e.g. in code excited linear prediction [CELP] vocoders
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/15 the extracted parameters being formant information
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/30 using neural networks
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/66 for extracting parameters related to health condition detecting or measuring for diagnostic purposes A61B5/00
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/93 Discriminating between voiced and unvoiced parts of speech signals G10L25/90 takes precedence

Abstract

Disclosed is a method for determining alcohol consumption capable of analyzing alcohol consumption in a time domain by analyzing a formant slope of a voice signal, and a recording medium and a terminal for carrying out same. An terminal for determining whether a person is drunk comprises: a voice input unit for generating a voice frame by receiving a voice signal; a voiced/unvoiced sound analysis unit for determining whether a received voiced frame corresponds to a voiced sound; a formant frequency extraction unit for extracting a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound; and an alcohol consumption determining unit for calculating a formant slope between the plurality of formant frequencies, and determining the state of alcohol consumption depending on the formant slope, thereby determining whether a person is drunk by analyzing the formant slope of an inputted voice.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for determining whether alcohol is consumed by a person in a vehicle, the computer implemented method comprising:

receiving a voice signal from said person and converting the received voice signal into a plurality of voice frames;

extracting a voice frame corresponding to a voiced sound among the plurality of voice frames;

extracting a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound;

calculating a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies;

determining whether alcohol is consumed by said person according to the calculated formant slope, wherein the determining comprises;

counting the number of voice frames each having a formant slope less than a predetermined threshold,

computing a ratio of the counted number of voice frames to the total number of voice frames, and

determining whether alcohol is consumed by said person when the computed ratio is greater than a predetermined value; and

enabling or disabling the vehicle based on the determination whether alcohol is consumed by said person.

2. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the extracting a voice frame corresponding to a voiced sound among the plurality of voice frames comprises:

extracting predetermined features from a voice frame among the plurality of voice frames, and

determining whether said voice frame is from a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the predetermined features comprise periodic characteristics of harmonics, root mean square energy (RMSE), or zero-crossing count (ZC) of a low-band voice signal energy area.

4. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the determining whether said voice frame is from a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise comprises using neural network.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the extracting of a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound comprises using algorithms of finding the formant frequency.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 5, wherein one of the algorithms of finding the formant frequency uses a linear prediction coefficient (LPC) cepstrum.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the extracting of a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound comprises extracting first to fourth formant frequencies of the voice frame.

8. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the calculating a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies comprises calculating a formant slope between the first formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency.

9. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the calculating a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies comprises calculating a formant slope between the second formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency.

10. A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium having a computer program recorded thereon for performing a method for determining whether alcohol is consumed by a person in a vehicle, the method comprising:

receiving a voice signal from the person in the vehicle and converting the received voice signal into a plurality of voice frames;

extracting a voice frame corresponding to a voiced sound among the plurality of voice frames;

extracting a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound;

calculating a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies;

determining whether alcohol is consumed by the person according to the calculated formant slope, wherein the determining comprises;

counting the number of voice frames each having a formant slope less than a predetermined threshold,

computing a ratio of the counted number of voice frames to the total number of voice frames, and

determining whether alcohol is consumed by the person when the computed ratio is greater than a predetermined value; and

enabling or disabling the vehicle based on the determination whether alcohol is consumed by the person.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 10, wherein the extracting a voice frame corresponding to a voiced sound among the plurality of voice frames comprises:

extracting predetermined features from a voice frame among the plurality of voice frames, and

determining whether said voice frame is from a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 11, wherein the predetermined features comprise periodic characteristics of harmonics, root mean square energy (RMSE), or zero-crossing count (ZC) of a low-band voice signal energy area.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 11, wherein the determining whether said voice frame is from a voiced sound, an unvoiced sound, or background noise comprises using neural network.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 10, wherein the extracting of a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound comprises using algorithms of finding the formant frequency.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 14, wherein one of the algorithms of finding the formant frequency uses a linear prediction coefficient (LPC) cepstrum.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 10, wherein the extracting of a plurality of formant frequencies of the voice frame corresponding to the voiced sound comprises extracting first to fourth formant frequencies of the voice frame.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 10, wherein the calculating a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies comprises calculating a formant slope between the first formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium of claim 10, wherein the calculating a formant slope between two formant frequencies among the plurality of formant frequencies comprises calculating a formant slope between the second formant frequency and the fourth formant frequency.