Conversational interface agent
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsBaining Guo, Bo Zhang, Heung-Yeung Shum
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A video rewrite technique for rendering a talking head or agent completely simulates a conversation by including a waiting or listening state. Smooth transitions are provided to and from a talking state.
Claims23
A computer readable medium having instructions, which when executed on a computer provide a user interface, the instructions comprising:
- a speech synthesizer receiving input for synthesis and providing an audio output signal;
- and
- a video rendering module receiving information related to the audio output signal, the video rendering module rendering a representation of a talking head having a talking state with mouth movements in accordance with the audio output signal and a waiting state with movements in accordance with listening.
A computer readable medium having instructions, which when executed on a computer provide a user interface, the instructions comprising:
- a speech synthesizer receiving input for synthesis and providing an audio output signal;
- and
- a video rendering module receiving information related to the audio output signal, the video rendering module rendering a representation of a talking head having a talking state with mouth movements in accordance with the audio output signal and a waiting state with mouth movements in accordance with listening, the video rendering module accessing a store having a sequence of frames of the talking head and continuously rendering at least a portion of each of the frames in the sequence of frames while selectively adding a corresponding mouth position for the talking state to each of the frames in accordance with the audio output signal and in accordance with tracking movements of the talking head during the sequence of frames.
A computer-implemented method for generating a talking head on a computer display to simulate a conversation, the method comprising:
- continuously rendering a sequence of video frames of a talking head with each frame having mouth characteristics indicative of a non-talking state;
- tracking movements of the talking head throughout the sequence of video frames;
- outputting a voice audio;
- and
- selectively adding a corresponding mouth position to selected frames of the video sequence as a function of the voice audio and tracked movements of the talking head.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.