Microsoft smart speaker may solve the problem of sound reflection

Daniel

Member
According to patentlyapple, the U.S. patent and Trademark Office recently authorized Microsoft with a new patent, involving the design of a smart speaker. Microsoft pointed out in the patent document that the voice controlled intelligent speaker is a combination of voice recognition system, with which users can interact.

In the voice controlled smart home speaker, the microphone array can be optimized to allow the formation of far-field waves for incoming voice commands, and the location of the microphone array can be circular. Although this allows optimization of omnidirectional remote voice pickups, the environments used by these devices are usually not omnidirectional open spaces. The introduction of hard and soft sound surfaces creates absorption and reflection surfaces that can change the reception of voice commands. These acoustic surfaces provide reverberation and produce a secondary overlapping signal, which is usually undesirable.

Microsoft smart speaker may solve the problem of sound reflection

In order to solve the above problems, Microsoft's patent includes the use of image sensors on the smart speaker system to detect room conditions, allowing the calibration of the microphone of the smart speaker system, and disabling one or more microphones to prevent sound reflection (reverberation).

In addition, signal processing in the speaker system can use room readings detected from the light to determine the proximity of the speaker system to one or more surfaces of the room. If the distance is less than the threshold distance, the acoustic reflections from these surfaces can be considered using signal processing related to receiving voice signals on the microphone array.
 
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