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The U.S. patent and trademark office has granted Microsoft a new patent for a smart speaker design, according to patentlyapple.
Photo credit: patentlyapple
According to Microsoft's patent filing, voice-activated smart speakers are speakers that are integrated with a speech recognition system and users can interact with them. In a voice-activated smart home speaker, the microphone array can be positioned optimally to allow far-field waves to form incoming voice commands, and the position of the microphone array can be circular. Although this allows for the optimization of omnidirectional remote voice pickups, the environment used by these devices is usually not omnidirectional open space. The introduction of hard and soft acoustic surfaces creates absorbing and reflecting surfaces that can change the reception of voice commands. These acoustic surfaces provide a reverberation that produces a secondary overlapping signal, which is usually undesirable.
To address these issues, Microsoft's proposed patent includes the use of image sensors on the smart speaker system to detect room conditions, the ability to calibrate the smart speaker system's microphones, and the ability to disable 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, acoustic reflections from these surfaces can be considered using signal processing associated with receiving voice signals on the microphone array.
Microsoft's patent filing:
Photo credit: patentlyapple
According to Microsoft's patent filing, voice-activated smart speakers are speakers that are integrated with a speech recognition system and users can interact with them. In a voice-activated smart home speaker, the microphone array can be positioned optimally to allow far-field waves to form incoming voice commands, and the position of the microphone array can be circular. Although this allows for the optimization of omnidirectional remote voice pickups, the environment used by these devices is usually not omnidirectional open space. The introduction of hard and soft acoustic surfaces creates absorbing and reflecting surfaces that can change the reception of voice commands. These acoustic surfaces provide a reverberation that produces a secondary overlapping signal, which is usually undesirable.
To address these issues, Microsoft's proposed patent includes the use of image sensors on the smart speaker system to detect room conditions, the ability to calibrate the smart speaker system's microphones, and the ability to disable 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, acoustic reflections from these surfaces can be considered using signal processing associated with receiving voice signals on the microphone array.
Microsoft's patent filing:
