Abstract: An improved determination of an acoustic coupling between a loudspeaker and a microphone, which results in a better estimate of the acoustic coupling during double talk, is achieved in a device for determining an acoustic coupling between a far-end talker signal as produced by the loudspeaker and a combined signal as picked up by the microphone. The combined signal comprises an echo of the far-end talker signal and a near-end talker signal. The acoustic coupling is derived from a ratio of changes in an envelope of the combined signal to changes in the envelope of the far-end talker signal in a predetermined time interval. In this way, a systematic error during double talk is strongly reduced.

Abstract: The invention relates to automatically verifying the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description, for example from a lighting atmosphere specified in XML (Extensible Markup Language) independent of a specific lighting infrastructure and of a room layout. A basic idea of the invention is to translate the possibilities of a lighting infrastructure into so called light element templates. A light element template contains an indication of the possibilities of the lighting infrastructure at a certain semantic location, for example in a shop or a home in which the lighting infrastructure is provided. For every type of light effect of a lighting infrastructure, a different light element template may be created. This allows to automatically verify the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description in a lighting infrastructure at an early stage of the lighting atmosphere design process.

Abstract: The invention proposes extracting one or more speech signals (151-154) as well as one or more ambient signals (131) from sound signals captured by microphones, wherein each of the speech signals corresponds to a different speaker. The invention proposes to transmit both the one or more speech signals (151-154) and the one or more ambient signals (131) to a rendering side, as opposed to sending only speech signals. This enables to reproduce the speech and ambient signals in a spatially different way at the rendering side. By reproducing the ambient signals a feeling of “being together” is created. In an embodiment, the invention enables reproducing two or more speech signals spatially from each other and from the ambient signals so that speech intelligibility is increased despite the presence of the ambient signals.

Abstract: A sound source location is estimated by particle filtering where a set of particles represents a probability density function for a state variable comprising the sound source location. The method includes determining the weight for a particle in response to a correlation between estimated acoustic transfer functions from the sound source to at least two sound recording positions. A weight update function may specifically be determined deterministically from the correlation and thus the correlation may be used as a pseudo-likelihood function for the measurement function of the particle filtering. The acoustic transfer functions may be determined from an audio beamforming towards the sound source. The audio weight may be combined with a video weight to generate a multi-modal particle filtering approach.

Abstract: The invention relates to automatically verifying the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description, for example from a lighting atmosphere specified in XML (Extensible Markup Language) independent of a specific lighting infrastructure and of a room layout. A basic idea of the invention is to create for each addressable light unit of a light infrastructure a so called light infrastructure capability that generally describes the effect, measures the maximum possible effect and relates the effect to a location in a semantic area of a target environment. This allows to automatically verifying the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description in a lighting infrastructure at an early stage of the lighting atmosphere design process.

Abstract: The invention relates to composing a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description for example a lighting atmosphere specified in XML, wherein the lighting atmosphere is generated by several lighting devices, by automatically rendering the desired lighting atmosphere from the abstract description. The abstract description describes the type of light with certain lighting parameters desired at certain semantic locations at certain semantic times. This abstract atmosphere description is automatically transferred to a specific instance of a lighting system (14, 16, 18). The invention has the main advantage that it allows to create light scenes and lighting atmospheres at a high level of abstraction without requiring the definition of a lighting atmosphere or scene by setting the intensity, color, etc. for single lighting units or devices which can be very time consuming and cumbersome, particularly with large and complex lighting systems comprising many lighting devices.

Abstract: The invention proposes extracting one or more speech signals (151-154) as well as one or more ambient signals (131) from sound signals captured by microphones, wherein each of the speech signals corresponds to a different speaker. The invention proposes to transmit both the one or more speech signals (151-154) and the one or more ambient signals (131) to a rendering side, as opposed to sending only speech signals. This enables to reproduce the speech and ambient signals in a spatially different way at the rendering side. By reproducing the ambient signals a feeling of “being together” is created. In an embodiment, the invention enables reproducing two or more speech signals spatially from each other and from the ambient signals so that speech intelligibility is increased despite the presence of the ambient signals.

Abstract: The present invention provides an improved determination of an acoustic coupling between a loudspeaker (110) and a microphone (120), which results in a better estimate of the acoustic coupling during double talk. This is achieved in a device (100) for determining an acoustic coupling between a far-end talker signal (101) as produced by the loudspeaker (110) and a combined signal (102), which comprises an echo of the far-end talker signal and a near-end talker signal, as picked up by the microphone (120), in which the acoustic coupling is derived from a ratio of changes in an envelope of the combined signal (102) to changes in the envelope of the far-end talker signal (101) in a predetermined time interval. In this way the systematic error during double talk (an estimation of the acoustic coupling that is too large) is not present anymore or at least strongly reduced.

Abstract: A sound source location is estimated by particle filtering where a set of particles represents a probability density function for a state variable comprising the sound source location. The method includes determining the weight for a particle in response to a correlation between estimated acoustic transfer functions from the sound source to at least two sound recording positions. A weight update function may specifically be determined deterministically from the correlation and thus the correlation may be used as a pseudo-likelihood function for the measurement function of the particle filtering. The acoustic transfer functions may be determined from an audio beamforming towards the sound source. The audio weight may be combined with a video weight to generate a multi-modal particle filtering approach.

Abstract: The invention relates to automatically verifying the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description, for example from a lighting atmosphere specified in XML (Extensible Markup Language) independent of a specific lighting infrastructure and of a room layout. A basic idea of the invention is to create for each addressable light unit of a light infrastructure a so called light infrastructure capability that generally describes the effect, measures the maximum possible effect and relates the effect to a location in a semantic area of a target environment. This allows to automatically verifying the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description in a lighting infrastructure at an early stage of the lighting atmosphere design process.

Abstract: The invention relates to composing a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description for example a lighting atmosphere specified in XML, wherein the lighting atmosphere is generated by several lighting devices, by automatically rendering the desired lighting atmosphere from the abstract description. The abstract description describes the type of light with certain lighting parameters desired at certain semantic locations at certain semantic times. This abstract atmosphere description is automatically transferred to a specific instance of a lighting system (14, 16, 18). The invention has the main advantage that it allows to create light scenes and lighting atmospheres at a high level of abstraction without requiring the definition of a lighting atmosphere or scene by setting the intensity, color, etc. for single lighting units or devices which can be very time consuming and cumbersome, particularly with large and complex lighting systems comprising many lighting devices.

Abstract: The invention relates to automatically verifying the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description, for example from a lighting atmosphere specified in XML (Extensible Markup Language) independent of a specific lighting infrastructure and of a room layout. A basic idea of the invention is to translate the possibilities of a lighting infrastructure into so called light element templates. A light element template contains an indication of the possibilities of the lighting infrastructure at a certain semantic location, for example in a shop or a home in which the lighting infrastructure is provided. For every type of light effect of a lighting infrastructure, a different light element template may be created. This allows to automatically verify the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description in a lighting infrastructure at an early stage of the lighting atmosphere design process.