Vehicle communication system
AssigneeHarman International Industries, Incorporated
InventorsMarkus Buck, Tim Haulick, Gerhard Uwe Schmidt
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention relates to a vehicle communication system comprising a plurality of microphones adapted to detect speech signals of different vehicle passengers, a mixer combining the audio signal components of the different microphones to a resulting speech output signal, a weighting unit determining the weighting of the audio signal components for the resulting speech output signal, where the weighting unit determines the weighting of the signal components based upon non-acoustical information about the presence of a vehicle passenger.
Claims24
A vehicle communication system comprising:
- a plurality of microphones configured to detect audio signals including speech signals of at least one vehicle passenger;
- a beamforming unit configured to receive the audio signals from the plurality of microphones and to generate a plurality of audio signal components corresponding to vehicle seat positions;
- a mixer combining the audio signal components to produce a resulting speech output signal;
- a seat occupancy detecting unit to detect the presence of non-occupied vehicle seats;
- a weighting unit configured to determine a weighting for each of the audio signal components, where the weighting unit sets the weighting of audio signal components of non-occupied seats to zero and where the weightings are applied when the audio signal components are combined to produce the resulting speech output signal;
- and
- an output loudspeaker beamforming unit, where the loudspeaker beamforming unit directs the output of loudspeakers only to occupied seat positions.
A method for controlling a speech output of a vehicle communication system, the method comprising:
- detecting speech signals of at least one vehicle passenger using a plurality of microphones, each microphone producing an audio signal;
- generating a plurality of audio signal components corresponding to a plurality of vehicle seat positions using the audio signals from the microphones;
- applying a weighting to each of the audio signal components, the weightings based upon a combination of acoustical and non-acoustical information about the presence of vehicle passengers;
- and
- combining the weighted audio signal components to generate a resulting speech output signal.
A method of controlling a speech output of a vehicle communication system, the method comprising:
- detecting speech signals of at least one vehicle passenger using a plurality of microphones, each microphone producing an audio signal;
- generating a plurality of audio signal components corresponding to a plurality of vehicle seat positions using the audio signals from the microphones;
- applying a weighting to each of the audio signal components, the weightings based upon a combination of acoustical and non-acoustical information about the presence of vehicles passengers;
- combining the weighted audio signal components to generate a resulting speech output signal;
- detecting the presence of non-occupied seats, where the weighting of signal components of non-occupied seats is set to zero;
- and
- routing the resulting speech output signal to a unit, where the unit directs the output of loudspeakers only to occupied seat positions.
A vehicle communication system comprising:
- a plurality of microphones adapted to detect speech signals of different vehicle passengers, each microphone producing an audio signal;
- a beamforming unit configured to receive the audio signals from the plurality of microphones and to generate a plurality of audio signal components corresponding to vehicle seat positions;
- a mixer combining the audio signal components to produce a resulting speech output signal;
- and
- a weighting unit determining the weighting of the audio signal components for the resulting speech output signal, where the weighting unit determines the weighting of the signal components based upon a combination of acoustical and non-acoustical information about the presence of a vehicle passenger.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.