Patents by Inventor Hiroshi Okuno

Hiroshi Okuno 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).

  • Publication number: 20110224977
    Abstract: A robot may include a driving control unit configured to control a driving of a movable unit that is connected movably to a body unit, a voice generating unit configured to generate a voice, and a voice output unit configured to output the voice, which has been generated by the voice generating unit. The voice generating unit may correct the voice, which is generated, based on a bearing of the movable unit, which is controlled by the driving control unit, to the body unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 14, 2010
    Publication date: September 15, 2011
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro NAKADAI, Takuma OTSUKA, Hiroshi OKUNO
  • Publication number: 20110224980
    Abstract: A speech recognition system according to the present invention includes a sound source separating section which separates mixed speeches from multiple sound sources from one another; a mask generating section which generates a soft mask which can take continuous values between 0 and 1 for each frequency spectral component of a separated speech signal using distributions of speech signal and noise against separation reliability of the separated speech signal; and a speech recognizing section which recognizes speeches separated by the sound source separating section using soft masks generated by the mask generating section.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 10, 2011
    Publication date: September 15, 2011
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Toru Takahashi, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Publication number: 20110214554
    Abstract: A musical score position estimating apparatus includes a sound feature quantity generating unit configured to generate a feature quantity of an input sound signal, and, a score position estimating unit configured to calculate a weight coefficient based on the feature quantity of the sound signal and a feature quantity of musical score information and estimates a musical score position using a virtual musical score position and a virtual tempo corresponding to the weight coefficient.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 1, 2011
    Publication date: September 8, 2011
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro NAKADAI, Takuma OTSUKA, Hiroshi OKUNO
  • Patent number: 8005666
    Abstract: An automatic system for temporal alignment between a music audio signal and lyrics is provided. The automatic system can prevent accuracy for temporal alignment from being lowered due to the influence of non-vocal sections. Alignment means of the system is provided with a phone model for singing voice that estimates phonemes corresponding to temporal-alignment features or features available for temporal alignment. The alignment means receives temporal-alignment features outputted from temporal-alignment feature extraction means, information on the vocal and non-vocal sections outputted from vocal section estimation means, and a phoneme network, and performs an alignment operation on condition that no phoneme exists at least in non-vocal sections.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 7, 2007
    Date of Patent: August 23, 2011
    Assignee: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
    Inventors: Masataka Goto, Hiromasa Fujihara, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Patent number: 7999168
    Abstract: A robot includes: a sound collecting unit collecting and converting a musical sound into a musical acoustic signal; a voice signal generating unit generating a self-vocalized voice signal; a sound outputting unit converting the self-vocalized voice signal into a sound and outputting the sound; a self-vocalized voice regulating unit receiving the musical acoustic signal and the self-vocalized voice signal; a filtering unit performing a filtering process; a beat interval reliability calculating unit performing a time-frequency pattern matching process and calculating a beat interval reliability; a beat interval estimating unit estimating a beat interval; a beat time reliability calculating unit calculating a beat time reliability; a beat time estimating unit estimating a beat time on the basis of the calculated beat time reliability; a beat time predicting unit predicting a beat time before the current time; and a synchronization unit synchronizing the self-vocalized voice signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 15, 2009
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Yuji Hasegawa, Hiroshi Tsujino, Kazumasa Murata, Ryu Takeda, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Patent number: 7987090
    Abstract: A system capable of reducing the influence of sound reverberation or reflection to improve sound-source separation accuracy. An original signal X(?,f) is separated from an observed signal Y(?,f) according to a first model and a second model to extract an unknown signal E(?,f). According to the first model, the original signal X(?,f) of the current frame f is represented as a combined signal of known signals S(?,f?m+1) (m=1 to M) that span a certain number M of current and previous frames. This enables extraction of the unknown signal E(?,f) without changing the window length while reducing the influence of reverberation or reflection of the known signal S(?,f) on the observed signal Y(?,f).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 7, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 26, 2011
    Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Ryu Takeda, Kazuhiro Nakadai, Hiroshi Tsujino, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Publication number: 20110164760
    Abstract: The sound source tracking device of the present invention comprises a plurality of differential microphones having bidirectionality, and a support member adapted to support the plurality of differential microphones such that the plurality of differential microphones are disposed in an array within a given plane. The plurality of differential microphones are supported on the support member such that their principal axes of directionality are approximately orthogonal to the given plane.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 8, 2010
    Publication date: July 7, 2011
    Applicant: FUNAI ELECTRIC CO., LTD. (a corporation of Japan)
    Inventors: Ryusuke HORIBE, Shuji Umeda, Fuminori Tanaka, Takeshi Inoda, Hiroshi Okuno, Toru Takahashi
  • Publication number: 20110118871
    Abstract: A thereminist robot has a characteristic model of theremin and is capable of performing in response to an environment of theremin performance by calibrating the characteristic model before the performance. A robot 10 has a first arm 12, a second arm 11, and a pitch model for indicating an arm position corresponding to a pitch of the theremin The robot 10 plays the theremin by moving the first arm 12 to the arm position corresponding to a musical note based on the target note and the pitch model.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 6, 2010
    Publication date: May 19, 2011
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Hiroshi TSUJINO, Hiroshi OKUNO, Takeshi MIZUMOTO
  • Publication number: 20110112994
    Abstract: A musical piece recommendation system is provided that allows instantaneous registration of a new user and a new musical piece without retraining in a basic training section. A first incremental training section 21 monitors a rating history storage section 3, and each time a change is made to a rating history or a new user is added, performs updating of or addition of the topic selection probability for the user for which the change is made to the rating history or for the new user such that the likelihood determined by a basic training section 17 is kept maximized. A second incremental training section 21 monitors an acoustic feature storage section 5, and each time a new musical piece is added to perform addition to acoustic features, adds the musical piece selection probability related to the added musical piece such that the likelihood determined by the basic training section 17 is kept maximized.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 31, 2008
    Publication date: May 12, 2011
    Applicant: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
    Inventors: Masataka Goto, Kazuyoshi Yoshii, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Publication number: 20110036231
    Abstract: A musical score position estimating device includes an audio signal acquiring unit, a musical score information acquiring unit acquiring musical score information corresponding to an audio signal acquired by the audio signal acquiring unit, an audio signal feature extracting unit extracting a feature amount of the audio signal, a musical score feature extracting unit extracting a feature amount of the musical score information, a beat position estimating unit estimating a beat position of the audio signal, and a matching unit matching the feature amount of the audio signal with the feature amount of the musical score information using the estimated beat position to estimate a position of a portion in the musical score information corresponding to the audio signal.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 6, 2010
    Publication date: February 17, 2011
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro NAKADAI, Takuma OTSUKA, Hiroshi OKUNO
  • Publication number: 20100329472
    Abstract: A reverberation suppressing apparatus separating sound source signals based on input signals output from microphones collecting the plurality of sound source signals, includes a sound signal output unit generating sound signals and outputting the generated sound signals, a sound acquiring unit acquiring the input signals from microphones, a first evaluation function calculation unit calculating a separation matrix, the input signals, and the sound source signals, and calculating a first evaluation function, a reverberation component suppressing unit calculating an optimal separation matrix, and suppressing a reverberation component by separating the sound source signals other than the generated sound signals, and a separation matrix updating unit dividing a step-size function, approximating each segment to a linear function, calculating step sizes based on the approximated linear functions, and repeatedly updating the separation matrix so that the degree of separation of the sound source signals exceeds the p
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 1, 2010
    Publication date: December 30, 2010
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro NAKADAI, Hirofumi NAKAJIMA, Hiroshi OKUNO, Ryu TAKEDA
  • Publication number: 20100189271
    Abstract: In a sound source localization system using a light emitting device for visualizing sound information, including: a light emitting device (40) including a microphone for receiving sound from a sound source (1, 2) and a light emitting means for emitting light based on the sound from the microphone; a generating section for generating light emitting information for the light emitting device (40); and a sound source localization section (60) for determining a position of the sound source based on the light emitting information from the generating section.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 4, 2009
    Publication date: July 29, 2010
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Hiroshi TSUJINO, Kazuhiro NAKADAI, Hiroshi OKUNO, Takeshi MIZUMOTO, Ikkyu AIHARA
  • Publication number: 20100191530
    Abstract: A speech understanding apparatus includes a speech recognition unit which performs speech recognition of an utterance using multiple language models, and outputs multiple speech recognition results obtained by the speech recognition, a language understanding unit which uses multiple language understanding models to perform language understanding for each of the multiple speech recognition results output from the speech recognition unit, and outputs multiple speech understanding results obtained from the language understanding, and an integrating unit which calculates, based on values representing features of the speech understanding results, utterance batch confidences that numerically express accuracy of the speech understanding results for each of the multiple speech understanding results output from the language understanding unit, and selects one of the speech understanding results with a highest utterance batch confidence among the calculated utterance batch confidences.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 22, 2010
    Publication date: July 29, 2010
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Mikio NAKANO, Masaki KATSUMARU, Kotaro FUNAKOSHI, Hiroshi OKUNO
  • Publication number: 20100131086
    Abstract: An audio signal produced by playing a plurality of musical instruments is separated into sound sources according to respective instrument sounds. Each time a separation process is performed, the updated model parameter estimation/storage section 114 estimates parameters respectively contained in updated model parameters such that updated power spectrograms gradually change from a state close to initial power spectrograms to a state close to a plurality of power spectrograms most recently stored in a power spectrogram separation/storage section. Respective sections including the power spectrogram separation/storage section 112 and an updated distribution function computation/storage section 118 repeatedly perform process operations until the updated power spectrograms change from the state close to the initial power spectrograms to the state close to the plurality of power spectrograms most recently stored in the power spectrogram separation/storage section 112.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 14, 2008
    Publication date: May 27, 2010
    Applicants: KYOTO UNIVERSITY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
    Inventors: Katsutoshi Itoyama, Hiroshi Okuno, Masataka Goto
  • Publication number: 20100082340
    Abstract: The speech recognition system of the present invention includes: a sound source separating section which separates mixed speeches from multiple sound sources; a mask generating section which generates a soft mask which can take continuous values between 0 and 1 for each separated speech according to reliability of separation in separating operation of the sound source separating section; and a speech recognizing section which recognizes speeches separated by the sound source separating section using soft masks generated by the mask generating section.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 19, 2009
    Publication date: April 1, 2010
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Toru Takahashi, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Publication number: 20100034397
    Abstract: A result of a sound source direction measurement based on an output of an REMA (first microphone array) (11) and a result of a sound source position measurement based on an output of an IRMA (second microphone array) (12) are integrated through a particle filter or in space. Thus, the different microphones, i.e., the REMA (11) and the IRMA (12) can cancel mutual defects or ambiguities with each other. Therefore, from views of improvement in accuracy and robustness a performance of sound source localization can be improved.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 9, 2007
    Publication date: February 11, 2010
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Hiroshi Tsujino, Yuji Hasegawa, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Publication number: 20100011939
    Abstract: A robot includes: a sound collecting unit collecting and converting a musical sound into a musical acoustic signal; a voice signal generating unit generating a self-vocalized voice signal; a sound outputting unit converting the self-vocalized voice signal into a sound and outputting the sound; a self-vocalized voice regulating unit receiving the musical acoustic signal and the self-vocalized voice signal; a filtering unit performing a filtering process; a beat interval reliability calculating unit performing a time-frequency pattern matching process and calculating a beat interval reliability; a beat interval estimating unit estimating a beat interval; a beat time reliability calculating unit calculating a beat time reliability; a beat time estimating unit estimating a beat time on the basis of the calculated beat time reliability; a beat time predicting unit predicting a beat time before the current time; and a synchronization unit synchronizing the self-vocalized voice signal.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 15, 2009
    Publication date: January 21, 2010
    Applicant: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro NAKADAI, Yuji Hasegawa, Hiroshi Tsujino, Kazumasa Murata, Ryu Takeda, Hiroshi Okuno
  • Publication number: 20100017034
    Abstract: A beat tracking apparatus includes: a filtering unit configured to perform a filtering process on an input acoustic signal and to accentuate an onset; a beat interval reliability calculating unit configured to perform a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated and to calculate a beat interval reliability; and a beat interval estimating unit configured to estimate a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 15, 2009
    Publication date: January 21, 2010
    Applicant: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro NAKADAI, Yuji HASEGAWA, Hiroshi TSUJINO, Kazumasa MURATA, Ryu TAKEDA, Hiroshi OKUNO
  • Patent number: 7526361
    Abstract: Robotics visual and auditory system is provided which is made capable of accurately conducting the sound source localization of a target by associating a visual and an auditory information with respect to a target.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 30, 2002
    Date of Patent: April 28, 2009
    Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Kazuhiro Nakadai, Hiroshi Okuno, Hiroaki Kitano
  • Publication number: 20090043588
    Abstract: A system capable of reducing the influence of sound reverberation or reflection to improve sound-source separation accuracy. An original signal X(?,f) is separated from an observed signal Y(?,f) according to a first model and a second model to extract an unknown signal E(?,f). According to the first model, the original signal X(?,f) of the current frame f is represented as a combined signal of known signals S(?,f?m+1) (m=1 to M) that span a certain number M of current and previous frames. This enables extraction of the unknown signal E(?,f) without changing the window length while reducing the influence of reverberation or reflection of the known signal S(?,f) on the observed signal Y(?,f).
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 7, 2008
    Publication date: February 12, 2009
    Applicant: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Ryu Takeda, Kazuhiro Nakadai, Hiroshi Tsujino, Hiroshi Okuno