Patents by Inventor Kazuhiro Nakadai

Kazuhiro Nakadai has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9595259
    Abstract: A sound source-separating device includes a sound-collecting part, an imaging part, a sound signal-evaluating part, an image signal-evaluating part, a selection part that selects whether to estimate a sound source direction based on the first sound signal or the first image signal, a person position-estimating part that estimates a sound source direction using the first image signal, a sound source direction-estimating part that estimates a sound source direction, a sound source-separating part that extracts a second sound signal corresponding to the sound source direction from the first sound signal, an image-extracting part that extracts a second image signal of an area corresponding to the estimated sound source direction from the first image signal, and an image-combining part that changes a third image signal of an area other than the area for the second image signal and combines the third image signal with the second image signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 24, 2015
    Date of Patent: March 14, 2017
    Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Takeshi Mizumoto, Kazuhiro Nakadai
  • Publication number: 20170061981
    Abstract: A sound source identification apparatus includes a sound collection unit including a plurality of microphones, a sound source localization unit configured to localize a sound source on the basis of an acoustic signal collected by the sound collection unit, a sound source separation unit configured to perform separation of the sound source on the basis of the signal localized by the sound source localization unit, and a sound source identification unit configured to perform identification of a type of sound source on the basis of a result of the separation in the sound source separation unit, and a signal input to the sound source identification unit is a signal having a magnitude equal to or greater than a first threshold value which is a predetermined value.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 3, 2016
    Publication date: March 2, 2017
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Satoshi Uemura
  • Patent number: 9583119
    Abstract: A sound source separating device includes: a sound collecting unit configured to collect sound signals using a plurality of microphones; a sound source localizing unit configured to localize a sound source on the basis of the sound signals collected by the sound collecting unit; a sound source separating unit configured to separate the sound signals collected by the sound collecting unit into sound sources corresponding to the number of fixed sound sources and fixed sound source directions without using the sound source localization result from the sound source localizing unit; and a speech extracting unit configured to extract speech signals of the fixed sound sources on the basis of the sound source localization result from the sound source localizing unit and the sound source separation result from the sound source separating unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 13, 2016
    Date of Patent: February 28, 2017
    Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Takeshi Mizumoto, Keisuke Nakamura
  • Publication number: 20170053662
    Abstract: An acoustic processing apparatus includes a sound source localization unit configured to estimate a direction of a sound source from an acoustic signal of a plurality of channels, a sound source separation unit configured to perform separation into a sound-source-specific acoustic signal representing a component of the sound source from the acoustic signal of the plurality of channels, and a sound source identification unit configured to determine a type of sound source on the basis of the direction of the sound source estimated by the sound source localization unit using model data representing a relationship between the direction of the sound source and the type of sound source, for the sound-source-specific acoustic signal.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 18, 2016
    Publication date: February 23, 2017
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Ryosuke Kojima
  • Publication number: 20170040030
    Abstract: An audio processing apparatus includes a first-section detection unit configured to detect a first section that is a section in which the power of a spatial spectrum in a sound source direction is higher than a predetermined amount of power on the basis of an audio signal of a plurality of channels, a speech state determination unit configured to determine a speech state on the basis of an audio signal within the first section, a likelihood calculation unit configured to calculate a first likelihood that a type of sound source according to an audio signal within the first section is voice and a second likelihood that the type of sound source is non-voice, and a second-section detection unit configured to determine whether or not a second section in which power is higher than average the power of a speech section is a voice section on the basis of the first likelihood and the second likelihood within the second section.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 27, 2016
    Publication date: February 9, 2017
    Inventors: Keisuke Nakamura, Kazuhiro Nakadai
  • Patent number: 9549274
    Abstract: A sound processing apparatus includes: a first sound collecting unit placed in a sound field and configured to collect a sound signal which is speech of a talker; a second sound collecting unit arranged to be movable to a position which is closer to a talker than the first sound collecting unit and configured to collect the sound signal; a transfer function estimating unit configured to estimate a transfer function from a sound signal collected by the first sound collecting unit and a sound signal collected by the second sound collecting unit when a talker is at a predetermined position in the sound field; and a sound signal processing unit configured to perform a process of the sound signal by use of the transfer function estimated by the transfer function estimating unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 2014
    Date of Patent: January 17, 2017
    Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Keisuke Nakamura, Kazuhiro Nakadai
  • Patent number: 9542937
    Abstract: A sound processing device includes a noise suppression unit configured to suppress a noise component included in an input sound signal, an auxiliary noise addition unit configured to add auxiliary noise to the input sound signal, whose noise component has been suppressed by the noise suppression unit, to generate an auxiliary noise-added signal, a distortion calculation unit configured to calculate a degree of distortion of the auxiliary noise-added signal, and a control unit configured to control an addition amount by which the auxiliary noise addition unit adds the auxiliary noise based on the degree of distortion calculated by the distortion calculation unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 7, 2014
    Date of Patent: January 10, 2017
    Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Keisuke Nakamura, Daisuke Kimoto
  • Publication number: 20160372134
    Abstract: A speech recognition apparatus includes: a sound collection unit that collects a sound signal; a sound source localization unit that calculates a spatial spectrum from the sound signal that is collected by the sound collection unit and uses the calculated spatial spectrum to perform sound source localization; a speech zone determination unit that determines a zone in which a power of the spatial spectrum that is calculated by the sound source localization unit exceeds a predetermined threshold value based on a vehicle state; and a speech recognition unit that performs speech recognition with respect to a sound signal of the zone determined by the speech zone determination unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 13, 2016
    Publication date: December 22, 2016
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Takeshi Mizumoto, Keisuke Nakamura, Masayuki Takigahira
  • Publication number: 20160372132
    Abstract: A voice enhancement device includes: a sound receiving unit configured to receive an audio signal; a vehicle state monitor unit configured to monitor a vehicle state; a noise estimation unit configured to estimate a noise component for each frequency component using a cumulative histogram created by accumulating frequency of power of the audio signal received by the sound receiving unit for each frequency component; and a voice enhancer configured to suppress the noise component for each frequency component estimated by the noise estimation unit in the received audio signal, wherein the noise estimation unit resets the cumulative histogram on the basis of a monitoring result of the vehicle state monitor unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 6, 2016
    Publication date: December 22, 2016
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Takeshi Mizumoto, Keisuke Nakamura, Masayuki Takigahira
  • Publication number: 20160372129
    Abstract: A sound source separating device includes: a sound collecting unit configured to collect sound signals using a plurality of microphones; a sound source localizing unit configured to localize a sound source on the basis of the sound signals collected by the sound collecting unit; a sound source separating unit configured to separate the sound signals collected by the sound collecting unit into sound sources corresponding to the number of fixed sound sources and fixed sound source directions without using the sound source localization result from the sound source localizing unit; and a speech extracting unit configured to extract speech signals of the fixed sound sources on the basis of the sound source localization result from the sound source localizing unit and the sound source separation result from the sound source separating unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 13, 2016
    Publication date: December 22, 2016
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Takeshi Mizumoto, Keisuke Nakamura
  • Patent number: 9478230
    Abstract: A speech processing apparatus that collects sound signals. With each of the collected sound signals, the apparatus may estimate a direction of a sound source, and select an extension filter that is applied to each sound signal. The extension filter may correspond to the estimated sound source of each of the sound signals. In addition, each of the sound signals may be corrected using the extension filter, and a reverberation reduction of the corrected sound signals and the collected sound signals may be performed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 24, 2014
    Date of Patent: October 25, 2016
    Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Randy Gomez, Kazuhiro Nakadai, Keisuke Nakamura
  • Publication number: 20160307570
    Abstract: A conversation processing apparatus includes a sound collection unit configured to collect voice signals of a plurality of speakers, a conversation recording unit configured to record the voice signals of the speakers collected by the sound collection unit, and a conversation analysis unit configured to calculate a degree to which a conversation between any two speakers is stimulated by analyzing the conversation between the two speakers from the voice signals recorded on the conversation recording unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 6, 2016
    Publication date: October 20, 2016
    Inventors: Takeshi Mizumoto, Kazuhiro Nakadai, Kenta Utsunomiya
  • Publication number: 20160307571
    Abstract: A conversation analysis device includes an utterance data acquisition unit that acquires utterance data representing a voice of each speaker and an utterance of the speaker, a speech state analysis unit that analyzes a speech state of each speaker on the basis of the voice, and a degree-of-contribution calculation unit that calculates a degree of contribution to the conversation of each speaker on the basis of the speech state.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 13, 2016
    Publication date: October 20, 2016
    Inventors: Takeshi Mizumoto, Kazuhiro Nakadai
  • Patent number: 9426553
    Abstract: A microphone array arrangement structure in a vehicle cabin is provided with multiple microphones arranged in a convex line. The microphones include a first microphone, and the direction of the axis of the first microphone faces the mouth of the driver. The microphone array arrangement structure is provided with covers housing the microphones and having multiple holes. The front surface of the covers form a convexly curved line, and each of the microphones is fixed inside of a cover to correspond to one of the holes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 6, 2012
    Date of Patent: August 23, 2016
    Assignee: HONDA ACCESS CORP.
    Inventors: Shiro Iwai, Kazuhiro Nakadai, Hiroshi Tsujino
  • Publication number: 20160212525
    Abstract: A sound source localization device, which has a plurality of sound pickup devices which record a sound signal and specifies a direction of a sound source based on sound signals recorded by at least two sound pickup devices of the sound pickup devices, includes a notification device that notifies information based on an arrangement of the sound pickup devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 24, 2015
    Publication date: July 21, 2016
    Inventor: Kazuhiro Nakadai
  • Publication number: 20160203828
    Abstract: A speech processing device includes a sound source localization unit configured to determine a sound source position from acquired speech, a reverberation suppression unit configured to suppress a reverberation component of the speech to generate dereverberated speech, a feature quantity calculation unit configured to calculate a feature quantity of the dereverberated speech, a feature quantity adjustment unit configured to multiply the feature quantity by an adjustment factor corresponding to the sound source position to calculate an adjusted feature quantity, and a speech recognition unit configured to perform speech recognition using the adjusted feature quantity.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 8, 2016
    Publication date: July 14, 2016
    Inventors: Randy Gomez, Kazuhiro Nakadai
  • Patent number: 9384760
    Abstract: A sound processing device includes a first noise suppression unit configured to suppress a noise component included in an input sound signal using a first suppression amount, a second noise suppression unit configured to suppress the noise component included in the input sound signal using a second suppression amount greater than the first suppression amount, a speech section detection unit configured to detect whether the sound signal whose noise component has been suppressed by the second noise suppression unit includes a speech section having a speech for every predetermined time, and a speech recognition unit configured to perform a speech recognizing process on a section, which is detected to be a speech section by the speech section detection unit, in the sound signal whose noise component has been suppressed by the first noise suppression unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 15, 2014
    Date of Patent: July 5, 2016
    Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Keisuke Nakamura, Tatsuya Higuchi
  • Patent number: 9378752
    Abstract: A sound processing device includes a separation unit configured to separate at least a music signal and a speech signal from a recorded audio signal, a noise suppression unit, a music feature value estimation unit, a speech recognition unit, a noise-processing confidence calculation unit, a music feature value estimation confidence calculation unit, a speech recognition confidence calculation unit, and a control unit configured to calculate at least one behavioral decision function of a speech behavioral decision function associated with speech and a music behavioral decision function associated with music based on a noise-processing confidence value, a music feature value estimation confidence value, and a speech recognition confidence value and to determine behavior corresponding to the calculated behavioral decision function.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 3, 2013
    Date of Patent: June 28, 2016
    Assignees: Honda Motor Co., Ltd., UNIVERSIDATE DO PORTO, INESC Porto
    Inventors: João Lobato Oliveira, Gökhan Ince, Keisuke Nakamura, Kazuhiro Nakadai, Hiroshi Okuno, Luis Paulo Reis, Fabien Gouyon
  • Patent number: 9336777
    Abstract: A speech processing device includes a speech recognition unit configured to sequentially recognize recognition segments from an input speech, a reverberation influence storage unit configured to store a degree of reverberation influence indicating an influence of a reverberation based on a preceding speech to a subsequent speech subsequent to the preceding speech and a recognition segment group including a plurality of recognition segments in correlation with each other, a reverberation influence selection unit configured to select the degree of reverberation influence corresponding to the recognition segment group which includes the plurality of recognition segments recognized by the speech recognition unit from the reverberation influence storage unit, and a reverberation reduction unit configured to remove a reverberation component weighted with the degree of reverberation influence from the speech from which at least a part of recognition segments of the recognition segment group is recognized.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 30, 2014
    Date of Patent: May 10, 2016
    Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Randy Gomez, Kazuhiro Nakadai, Keisuke Nakamura
  • Publication number: 20160064000
    Abstract: A sound source-separating device includes a sound-collecting part, an imaging part, a sound signal-evaluating part, an image signal-evaluating part, a selection part that selects whether to estimate a sound source direction based on the first sound signal or the first image signal, a person position-estimating part that estimates a sound source direction using the first image signal, a sound source direction-estimating part that estimates a sound source direction, a sound source-separating part that extracts a second sound signal corresponding to the sound source direction from the first sound signal, an image-extracting part that extracts a second image signal of an area corresponding to the estimated sound source direction from the first image signal, and an image-combining part that changes a third image signal of an area other than the area for the second image signal and combines the third image signal with the second image signal.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 24, 2015
    Publication date: March 3, 2016
    Inventors: Takeshi Mizumoto, Kazuhiro Nakadai