Method and system for tracking human speakers

A method of tracking at least one human speaker using a plurality of acoustic sensors in order to effectively detect a voice from the human speaker in an environment having ambient noise, wherein the human speaker and the acoustic sensors are separated by a speaker distance along a speaker direction and wherein the human speaker is allowed to move relative to the acoustic sensors resulting in a change in the speaker direction within an angular range, and wherein each acoustic sensor produces an electrical signal responsive to the voice of the human speaker, said method comprising the steps of:

• a) forming N different beams from the electrical signal, wherein N is a positive integer greater than 1 and each beam defining a favorable direction to detect the voice of the human speaker by the acoustic sensors and each different beam is directed in a substantially different direction within the angular range, wherein each beam has a beam power responsive to the electrical signal;
• and
• b) periodically comparing the beam power of each beam in order to determine a most favorable direction to detect the voice of the human speaker according to the change of the speaker direction, wherein the most favorable detection direction is updated with a frequency ranging from 8 Hz to 50 Hz in order to obtain a new most favorable detection direction for replacing a current most favorable detection direction.

A method of tracking at least one human speaker using a plurality of acoustic sensors in order to effectively detect a voice from the human speaker in an environment having ambient noise, wherein the human speaker and the acoustic sensors are separated by a speaker distance along a speaker direction and wherein the human speaker is allowed to move relative to the acoustic sensors resulting in a change in the speaker direction within an angular range, and wherein each acoustic sensor produces an electrical signal responsive to the voice of the human speaker, said method comprising the steps of:

• a) forming N different beams from the electrical signal, wherein N is a positive integer greater than 1 and each beam defining a favorable direction to detect the voice of the human speaker by the acoustic sensors and each differernt beam is directed in a substantially different direction within the angular range, wherein each beam has a beam power responsive to the electrical signal;
• and
• b) periodically comparing the beam power of each beam in order to determine a most favorable direction to detect the voice of the human speaker according to the change of the speaker direction, wherein the method further comprises the step of assigning a weighting factor to each beam according to the speaker direction in order to adjust the beam power of each beam prior to determining the most favorable detection direction in step (b).

A method of tracking at least one human speaker using a plurality of acoustic sensors in order to effectively detect a voice from the human speaker in an environment having ambient noise, wherein the human speaker and the acoustic sensors are separated by a speaker distance along a speaker direction and wherein the human speaker is allowed to move relative to the acoustic sensors resulting in a change in the speaker direction within an angular range, and wherein each acoustic sensor produces an electrical signal responsive to the voice of the human speaker, said method comprising the steps of:

• a) forming N different beams from the electrical signal, wherein N is a positive integer greater than 1 and each beam defining a favorable direction to detect the voice of the human speaker by the acoustic sensors and each different beam is directed in a substantially different direction within the angular range, wherein each beam has a beam power responsive to the electrical signal;
• and
• b) periodically comparing the beam power of each beam in order to determine a most favorable direction to detect the voice of the human speaker according to the change of the speaker direction, wherein the method farther comprises the step of assigning a weighting factor to each beam according to the speaker location in order to adjust the beam power of each beam prior to determining the most favorable detection direction in step (b).