Automatic speech recognition system and method
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
InventorsAntonio Colmenarez, Andreas Kellner
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Abstract
An automatic speech recognizer only responsive to acoustic speech utterances is activated only in response to acoustic energy having a spectrum associated with the speech utterances and at least one facial characteristic associated with the speech utterances. In one embodiment, a speaker must be looking directly into a video camera and the voices and facial characteristics of plural speakers must be matched to enable activation of the automatic speech recognizer.
Claims27
A speech recognition system comprising an acoustic detector for detecting speech utterances of a speaker;
- a visual detector for detecting at least one facial characteristic associated with speech utterances of the speaker;
- a processing arrangement connected to be responsive to the acoustic and visual detectors for deriving a signal having first and second values respectively indicative of the speaker making and not making speech utterances such that the first value is derived only in response to the acoustic detector detecting a finite, nonzero acoustic response while the visual detector detects at least one facial characteristic associated with speech utterances of the speaker;
- and a speech recognizer for deriving an output indicative of the speech utterances as detected only by the acoustic detector, the speech recognizer being connected to be responsive to the acoustic detector only while the signal has the first value.
A method of recognizing speech utterances of a speaker with an automatic speech recognizer only responsive to acoustic speech utterances of the speaker comprising detecting acoustic energy having a spectrum associated with speech utterances, detecting at least one facial characteristic associated with speech utterances of the speaker, and activating the automatic speech recognizer only in response to the detected acoustic energy having a spectrum associated with speech utterances while the at least one facial characteristic associated with speech utterances of the speaker is occurring.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.